This spat is being pumped up. Also, last week some people were all wet because Olberman beat O’Reilly for the first time in the ratings. Oh, wait, that’s not entirely true. Olberman edged out O’Reilly in the 25 to 54 year-old demographic. Overall, O’Reilly still had double the viewers that Olberman had. What this means is that within this much hyped feud, Olberman is pretty much screaming in an empty room compared to O’Reilly.
Now, don’t get your shit in a twist, I’m not pimping for O’Reilly, although if a gun were being held to my head and I was told to pick one to watch I’d certainly pick O’Reilly.
Jesus. Nothing I HATE worse than people changing crap in an attempt to make it better. Yahoo has been doing this a lot lately. I use My Yahoo for an internet based mail client. I have the home page set up JUST THE WAY I LIKE IT! I like simplicity when it comes to my web browsing experience. I know right where my e-mail is. I know where everything is. That is until you CHANGE EVERYTHING AROUND!
Yahoo changes their shit and then I have to search for the link to change it back. No, Yahoo, you’re not improving my experience with you. You are pissing me off.
Stop it.
Stop it.
STOP IT!!!
I’d love to find the little geek responsible and pimp slap his/her ass so hard their great grand children feel it.
Today I went to the drugstore to get a prescription filled. The guy behind the counter informed me that it would take two hours.
Two hours???!!!
Christ. I asked the guy why the hell it takes two freakin’ hours to grab something off the shelf and stick it in a bag. His reply was some drivel about having a lot of scrips to fill. I told him that there were no circumstances under which it is acceptable to take two hours to fill a prescription. I told him I’d be back in an hour and if it wasn’t filled I’d take the prescription back and take it somewhere else.
I have a five-year-old son. He loves to watch movies; kind of like his old man. Some time ago we saw the trailer for Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and thought that it might be a cool movie for the spawn. Oh, how wrong I was. I can’t stress this enough; for the love of all that is holy, for the betterment of all humanity, for the love of Christ, do not, I mean DO NOT go see this flick. The effort it takes to glance up at a poster pimping this horrible film while strolling along the sidewalk in front of the movie theater is a colossal waste of time and effort. Your time would be better spent walking across a multi-lane freeway dodging cars going 80 miles per hour to pick up a penny.
What the hell was Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman thinking? Did they share the same crack pipe when deciding to take part in this debacle? I can’t explain it. Word to Dustin and Natalie: Dustin, retire, go away. Take it to heart that you’ve left us with some wonderful films and fine examples of your acting ability. But after this ... Oy, find a niche that suits you at this juncture in your life, but don’t ever, ever, ever stoop this low again. Natalie, ah, Natalie, Natalie, Natalie. Being the babe you are and the fact that you are still young, I’ll forgive you for this ridiculous lack of taste and judgment. Move on, forget it ever happened, wipe the mud from your face, straighten your self out and move on with the forever quest of your life being to redeem yourself.
One of the side effects of my recent career change from fairly active to a desk job has been the fact that I’ve quickly started to get out of shape even more than I was before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not extremely over weight or a complete physical wreck. I’ve always been in decent shape, but over the past couple of months I’ve noticed the beginning of what could be a slippery slope.
So in response, I’ve taken up Krav Maga. Click on the link if you’ve never heard of it. Anyway, tonight was my first session and it literally kicked my ass. I swear, I was almost ready to step outside and hurl my guts out at one point. It was great. I couple nights each week of this and I should be in fine shape in a few months.
Oh yeah, I’ve dug out some of my writing related material and have started working on it again. It feels good to have life take on an even keel. Lets just hope it stays that way for a while.
OK, so I’m sitting here at the kitchen table posting a blog entry for the first time since … August. Freakin’ August.
Man, what the hell have I been doing since August? Well, actually, a whole hell of a lot has happened. I hit a multi-million dollar lottery the last week of August and I’ve been chilling out ….
Nah, you idjit. I didn’t hit the lottery.
What I did was do a complete career change-over as a result of an unexpected opportunity from an old friend. Maybe someday I’ll go into it deeper, but I doubt it. Anyway, I quit my job that I’d been at for 18 years and started a new career in financial services. I won’t go into it too deeply other than to say that I’ll be helping people to avoid having to work as a WalMart greeter in their retirement years to make ends meet. In reality this isn’t something that’s completely out of the blue as I’ve been peripherally interested in this for some time.
So, I quit my old job which was beginning to suck in a big way (it’s amazing how new owners and new management can really screw things up). It was WAY past time for me to leave and aside from the usual anxiety that comes from jumping out of one’s comfort zone, it was a great feeling to walk out of the door. I was subjected to an hour and a half exit interview by HR in an attempt for them to find out just why they can’t seem to hire anyone or keep any of their key people. I laid it all out and told them exactly what the problems were. I doubt they’ll listen.
Anyway, new career, new challenges, new rewards. I did have to study for and take some exams put forth by such organizations as the NASD (now known as FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the state of Utah. By the way, who the hell comes up with the verbiage on a series 6 exam?
In between the changeover, the studying, the working and everything else—called life—I haven’t had any time to do anything extracurricular. Now, however; I’m thinking that I’ll actually be able to get back to some writing, and other things that I love to do but haven’t been able to devote any time to. I guess that’s called prioritization. Gotta put bread on the table as it were.
Well, I’ll start working on regaining my paltry readership. Hell, to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit if you read or not. I do this for me.
It’s true. There are literally tumbleweeds blowing in, about, and through Danielmedley.com. This summer has been amazingly eventful for a relatively uneventful summer which has left very little time to do almost anything superfluous, including regular updates to this website.
Just when things started to get on an even keel something came up that sent everything askew once again. Now, I’m not bitching about this, I’m just voicing what’s going through my head. What sent my world reeling once again is not a negative thing; far from it. But it could potentially result in some serious changes in my life. I’m not going to get in to it extensively at the moment. All I will say is that I’m doing something that I’ve not done in years which is studying in a formal, regimental manner with a specific goal in mind. Anyway, enough about that.
Side note:
My wife and I watched The De Vinci Code last night. What a pathetic, banal, gut wrenchingly bad piece of cinematic dog poop that film is. The reasons that it was so bad are too numerous to even discuss.
Last week, we went over to Justin and Julee’s house and watched 300 on their big, fancy, schmancy 53 inch HD flat-panel. Now, that movie was so good that it gave me wood. The reasons that it was so good were as numerous as the reasons that The De Vinci Code was so bad.
Just perusing the net, I see that Owen Wilson may have tried to commit suicide. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is my message to him would be to buck up, trooper. Not that he’s likely to stop by this website anytime soon to see what I have to say.
Speaking of famous people, what the hell is up with Amy Winehouse? Man, I was in to her latest album before it was even released in the states. If you haven’t done so yet, go out and buy it. It’s truly a great piece of work. It’s too bad she’s in a quick, downard, spiral. My advice to her would be to stop being an idiot and lay off of the heroin, crack, and cocaine immediately after she eats a couple of meals heavy in carbs and protein and a bit on the largish side. In fact I’ll be specific in advising her first step to recovery be that she jump on a plane to Vegas and take up residence at a 24 hour all-you-can-eat buffet and do nothing but eat for a couple of weeks.
I’m just saying.
Ok, I’ll stop with the juvenile mental meanderings concerning others and wrap this up so that I can go pick up my son from his first day of school this year. Hopefully the building is still standing.
Yeah, yeah. It’s been a long time. I’ve been busy, though. Busy with summer crap. Actually, it’s been a pretty good summer. We went to Idaho, visited and had fun, and then a few weeks later we were off to Vegas with some friends. That was fun as well although I did get to experience up-sale techniques from a waiter in a French restaurant that would’ve made a used care salesman blanch. That’s a whole other story.
Man, I’m sitting here—typing of course—and I have Vh1 Classic playing in the background. Don Johnson has to wish that he could get his hands on every copy of Waiting for a Heartbeat and purge the earth and his life of that debacle.
Driving into Council I was amazed at the local Shell gas station’s price of 2.42 per gallon of mid-grade gasoline. The same stuff in Salt Lake was 2.28. Supply and demand my ass. Tell me, how can the demand be higher in a town of just over 900 people than it is in a metro area of over a million?
Anyway, I digress.
One of the highlights of the vacation was our camping trip with a couple of friends; Rob and his wife Kim. We drove up to an area out of McCall, Goose lake road to be exact. We went above Hazard Lake, kept to the right heading towards Little French Creek towards the Hershey Point Lookout, and found a great camping spot over an area called Elk Meadows.
On the way we stopped in a little antique shop/coffee house for what I believe to be the best damn cappuccino in Central Idaho. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place. When I get my credit card statements back I’ll be sure and make note and mention them. Anyway, we stopped and got our cappuccino and I struck up a conversation with the proprietor. He mentioned that he’d just read in the local paper that the Fish and Game department was bragging about dumping a bunch of tiger muskies—a beast that is a cross between a northern pike and a muskellunge—into many of the backcountry lakes in an attempt to deplete the eastern brook trout population. See, the eastern brook trout is not indigenous to Idaho. Some time in the 1930’s they were planted in a few streams and took off like gangbusters. As a result they’ve practically chased out the native rainbow. Sure, in the streams like the Salmon River and Snake, you can catch rainbows like nobody’s business, but in many of the backcountry lakes the brookie is what you are most likely to catch. They are so plentiful that the limit is 25. Yes, 25 freakin’ brookies. Stop by the gas n go, grab a bunch of worms, then go to almost any high mountain lake, and you can catch a shit-load of brookies and have one hell of a fish fry.
The Fish and Game department stated in the article that they wanted to kill off most of the brookies with the tiger muskies then gill the tiger muskies out of the lakes. Then they planned on planting rainbow trout back into the lakes because that’s what anglers wanted. This was much to the chagrin of the coffee house proprietor. He, like most locals, prefers the brookies to the rainbow simply because they taste better. The Fish and Game, however, is interested in catering to the pompous catch and release crowd who live in the cities and come in from other states. They spend lots of money buying fishing licenses and then lots of gas money to drive into the mountains, commune with nature, catch a rainbow and then throw it back. This is something that to most locals is patently absurd. They sure as hell aren’t going to go traipsing about the wilds to catch a fish simply to throw it back. It’s fuckin’ goofy. And, most of the locals prefer the taste of a brookie over a rainbow.
Just mere days before we left for this camping trip my dad was reminiscing about all the brookies in those lakes and how it was such a pleasure to eat them right out of the lake; roasted on an open flame and how he hated catching rainbows because they taste like shit. I actually began to struggle with how I was going to inform him that that was all about to change.
When we got to Hazard Lake we stopped for a little break and I was amazed at how things had changed since the last time I’d been to Hazard Lake proper some three decades prior. Then it was truly a back-country lake requiring what seemed an eternity on rough road to get to. Once there you could find a secluded, shady camping spot pretty easy in and among the thick timber that surrounded the lake. The road is still a bit slow-going in spots, but now there are developed camping spots around the lake that require a fee. I’m talking paved pads and a handicapped equipped hand-crank water pump. The place had a few campers parked like a small city in the making and I saw at least two people carrying what appeared to be thousand-dollar fly rods. Also, the lake was just shy of a moonscape in that most of the trees had been burned back in—I believe—1993 when 330,000 acres went up in the Corral Complex fire. That was the one where then President Clinton dropped in via helicopter to give a pep talk to the thousands of firefighters and National Guardsmen. The fire burned until the snow fell.
We continued past Hazard Lake and towards Hershey Point, to the head waters of Little French Creek, traveling through what seemed an endless landscape of burned forest. The scope of the burn is almost incomprehensible. Intermittently among the vast acreage of carnage there would be an inexplicable patch of forest that had somehow survived the inferno; a gray, dead sea of burned landscape speckled with an occasional patch of pristine beauty. Just off the road we found just such a spot along side of a creek coming from the snowmelt in the mountains above. It appeared to be a hunting camp with an ample stock of split wood. Rob and I agreed that this place would be perfect to set up camp. Besides, everyone, with the exception of my son, had a strong hankering for a beer which could only happen once camp was set up.
Ok, I’m lying. The beer didn’t wait until after camp was set up. By the time we got there, I’d already put away three. New Castles if I must admit; the best damned beer God ever created.
After we set up camp and put back a few more beers we decided to load up in the truck and do some exploring to see how far the road might take us. The biggest impediment was the prospect of wind-fallen burned trees that had landed across the road. Since we’d managed to forget to bring the chainsaw with us, it was a concern. About two miles up the road from the camp we saw 7 wolf pups in the middle of the road. They were romping about, playing grab-ass and then stopped and gawked at our appearance. I figured them to be around 8 to 10 weeks of age and they didn’t seem overly concerned with our presence. As we got within 40 yards or so they split up; 4 going up the hill from the road, and 3 heading down the hill. Over the last ten years or so, since the reintroduction of wolves to this part of the country, they have done quite well. Better, in fact, than I think anyone had anticipated. So good in fact that they have become a bit of a nuisance to the point that there will be a hunting season on them to thin them out. Seeing 7 pups made me understand their voracious appetite for reproduction. You will very rarely, if ever, see that many coyote pups. The most I’ve ever seen are three and coyote pups have a much larger mortality rate than wolves. Think about that and than consider that coyotes are almost always shot on sight, and then realize that there are more coyotes there than there are crooked politicians and you get an idea of just how well the wolves have done since reintroduction. Ask the cattle and sheep rancher too. Especially the one who lost 30 calves to a pack just outside of Council.
Don’t get me wrong. Unlike most people in that area, I’m not of the mindset that wolves should be exterminated like they almost were over the last century. Notice I said almost. That’s because it’s a myth that the wolves were exterminated from Central Idaho. Oh, they tried to exterminate them for sure, but there have always been wolves there. Not many, but they were there. Now, after the so called reintroduction, they are rampant. Love it or hate it, the fact is that people live there now and always will until some global catastrophe or meteor or whatever occurs. It will never be like it was before humans come around. That’s the reality. Since that’s the reality, it means that there has to be some middle ground. In fact there will be middle ground no matter what some government lackey tries to do or say. I guarantee it. The thinning has already begun.
Anyway, I did rather enjoy seeing those wolf pups. The next morning when we woke up and crawled from our tents, we noticed two sets of adult wolf tracks that had paid a cautious visit to the parameters of our campsite. Something, we aren’t sure because we couldn’t verify with immediate tracks, pissed all over Rob’s tent. I can’t imagine a wolf coming in our camp to do it, but because Rob is a rancher and there is a natural hatred of wolves in him, well, hell, maybe the wolf thought to itself, I’m going to piss all over this asshole’s tent. Ok, I’m starting to sound like Shirley McLean.
Deep in the throws of our vacation. This morning Anna, Alek, and I set out on the Little Salmon River for the purpose of catching some fish. As a result we just finished eating a late lunch of trout dredged in seasoned flour and fried in butter, along with a summer salad and a glass of Pinot Grigio. All was followed up with a not too small slice of cheesecake for Anna and me, and a moderate dole of ice cream for Alek. I must say that I’m deep in a culinary bliss.
Soon we are meeting up with some friends and going on a back-country excursion. Perhaps we’ll be back by dark.
Perhaps.
Quick note: On the way through Boise we stopped and met up with Casey for a quick visit. It’s always a pleasure to meet up with fellow bloggers and chew the fat. Both Casey and I are Idaho yokels from our inception which meant that in the few short minutes that we talked we quickly hit some common ground.
Remember that invite, Casey, if you and your family are ever through Salt Lake City.
Because the Utah Department of Transportation decided to close every fucking on-ramp to I-15 South bound it took me an extra almost an hour to get home from work tonight. Keep in mind that it normally takes about a half hour. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, me being me, I had to go to their web site and let them know how I feel.
Tell me, what over-paid, under-worked, pencil-pushing, government paid, blithering idiot thought it was a good idea to close EVERY FREAKING ONRAMP TO I-15 SOUTH BOUND from I-215 to 90th south tonight? I couldn’t get home because of this idiotic mess. The only reason something like this would be warranted would be if you’re BUILDING A NEW FREAKING FREEWAY FROM SCRATCH!!!
The lack of intelligence required to do such a stupid thing makes me wonder how whoever decided to do it can even perform basic motor functions like breathing, or scratching your ass.
This is precisely why the average taxpayer rolls their eyes at government functionaries like you.
Do EVERYONE a favor. DO NOT CLOSE access to the freeway. If you feel that you must, then your plan is not good. Put that expensive education to use and think of a better plan.
And I did leave my contact information. I dare these assholes to follow up.
Keep in mind that I know the roads here so I can work my way through it. But I pity the poor asshole who was just trying to pass through on I-215 trying to connect to I-15. They would’ve come up on an on ramp that was just simply closed. No detour signs, no warning, no FUCKING NOTHING.
Who would’ve thought that finding a cake would be so damn difficult?
Friday we’re leaving for Idaho to visit family. Our son’s fifth birthday is Sunday, and my stepbrother’s birthday is, I think, Monday, so my wife wanted to pick up a couple of cakes. Sounds simple enough, right?
You’d be wrong. See, my wife, being the Euro she is, doesn’t think highly of American style bakery cakes. You know; the kind you’d by in a grocery store? She calls them, “tasteless bread covered with sugary frosting.” Her line of thinking is that if you’re going to sin, you do it with a cake that tastes heavenly.
Here in Salt Lake we’ve picked up cakes at a nifty little French bakery that are pretty damn good. I mean these things are the real deal. But the prospect of them making an 8 hour trip is sketchy, so we’re thinking, Hey, we’ll stop by a bakery in Boise on the way through and pick one up. The two and half hour drive from there shouldn’t be a problem. I put out a feeler to a vague contact in Boise and they were kind enough to suggest a French bakery in the city. Now, how damn cool is that?
Well, a phone call to said French bakery in Boise revealed they don’t make cakes.
What???
They were kind enough to suggest a place that did make cakes and I called them up. Although they are a grocery store, they supposedly have a gourmet bakery that makes cheesecakes using locally grown fruits. It looks like this place could be the ticket.
With the first draft of previously mentioned screenplay that is.
The plan was to have it finished before I go on vacation and then work on it while on vacation. My vacation doesn’t start for another 10 days and I’m vowing to NOT pick the damn thing up until then. I’ve already made a bunch of notes concerning things that I feel need to be addressed, so I won’t even make more notes. I want to just forget about the thing until I’m relaxed, kicking back, and feel compelled to reach over and pick it up and get to work.
I’ve really been burning the midnight oil with this thing and, frankly, I think this 10 day break is going to be just what my feeble, little brain needs.
I’ve got accounts at both Triggerstreet and Zoetrope. At Zoetrope I participate in the short story, novella, and screenplay parts of the website. At Triggerstreet, just the screenplay. I’ve reviewed three screenplays at Zoetrope and the only thing I can say is, ouch. Man, I haven’t read one screenplay there that doesn’t suck. I’m not talking, “sucks, but there are good aspects to it.” I’m talking sucks in every way imaginable. I’ve read a couple of novellas too and they are every bit as bad. Over on Triggerstreet I have managed to read a couple of screenplays that are pretty decent. But even so, the majority are just horrible.
Now, I’m not trying to come across as some Know it all who is a great story teller, or who has written a bunch of screenplays, but I can tell you that I do have a pretty damn good understanding of story plus I have at least a modicum of understanding concerning the screenplay form.
All this said, I must say that I absolutely love these sites because I love to read other people’s work. Even if it is like pulling teeth. The reason for this is that you can learn a lot from deconstructing a story or a screenplay. It’s gotten to the point where I can tell early on why something isn’t working. I can see it as plain as day. In fact it’s easier to see why something doesn’t work than it is to recognize why something does work. Even so, knowing why something doesn’t work is very helpful.