Some additional PREACHER thoughts

On June 30, 2016June 30, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television3 Comments

preacher-season-1-post-103-Jackie-Earle-Haley-Odin-Quincannon-1200x707.jpg We’re, what, four episodes into PREACHER now? Five? You may remember I had some quick, mostly ambivalent thoughts about how the show was going after the first episode aired.

Well… I haven’t missed an episode yet, and I’m probably not going to be starting anytime soon, but I’m still not exactly hooked. Two definite pluses have revealed themselves as the show has gone on, though: Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Odin Quincannon is wonderful, and what initially appeared to be a minor lack of concern with the source material has evolved into full blown “Fuck it, we’re doing it live”-level disrespect. PREACHER doesn’t care at all about the source material beyond vague character descriptions (Tulip is nothing like she is in the books) and is just kinda gleefully throwing whatever it wants at the wall to see what sticks. It’s as if they’ve been told that they get two seasons, max, but that if they don’t work in at least one plot detail from each graphic novel of the series Garth Ennis gets to take all of their money. I thought THE WALKING DEAD was a loose adaptation of the source material. Nah, son. TWD is an amateur compared to PREACHER.

Is that a plus? Right now, I’m going with yes, because I have absolutely no idea what’s coming next, and the first half-season of an adaptation doesn’t usually do that to you. I kinda knew what was going to happen to Ned Stark at the end of Season One of GAME OF THRONES, y’know? I just hope the show has an idea what’s coming next, and I’ll admit I have some doubt. But I’m still watching. We’ll see where we are at the end of the season.

A recommendation

On June 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek6 Comments

osaki-executive-zero-gravity-massage-chair-black-29.png.jpeg Every place where the employees have to spend all day on their feet should have access to $5,000 massage chairs that do foot massages. Because holy shit.

I have determined that five minutes in The Chair at the end of each shift is now a perk of my job. I have never really been a Massage Person because I dislike people who I can’t see touching me. This dislike apparently does not apply to mechanical objects. Like, it’s two hours later, and I’m at home in my shitty La-Z-Boy recliner, and I can still feel the damn thing working my lower back. Highly recommended. If Trump made getting one of these things for every American family a campaign promise I’d vote for him. Bernie Sanders would be all like “Fuck free college, just give errbody a chair.” Clinton would promise one too and then everyone would get all shitty and accuse her of pandering to the “likes good things” demographic. That good.

In other news, it’s been confirmed that my training wheels come off on Monday, so I’ve only got a couple more days of training left. The last couple have been really intense compared to last week, and tomorrow and Friday promise to be even worse. Still having fun, though. I like the feeling of having a shitton of stuff I’m supposed to learn and absorb, and I think I’m doing a decent job at it so far. But I’m still ready to kick those trainers off. Just a few more days.

Well my day is made already

On June 29, 2016June 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek4 Comments

A .gif so good it deserves its own post. I need a larger version.

Some book news

On June 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

All of my books other than Searching for Malumba have been re-submitted to Smashwords, and should be available there soon and propagating to the various other online bookstores soon afterwards. Malumba comes off of Kindle Select in late July and will be popping back up everywhere soon after that. This marks the third time, I think, that I’ve gone back and forth from “Amazon exclusivity” to “available everywhere,” and I will obviously let you know the next time I change my mind again.

What’s made the difference? Mostly that my books aren’t selling for shit on Amazon right now anyway, and so there’s no good reason not to broaden the number of places they can sell poorly at. 🙂 I feel like I’ve done enough free giveaways over the last six months or so of Amazon exclusivity that I’m reaching a saturation point with people I currently reach who might download them, so it’s time to spread my reach out again and see how well that works for me. At least BA Vol 1 will be showing up on OpenBooks again, and it is, notably, once again permanently free on Smashwords and the Smashwords affiliates if you haven’t checked it out yet.

Also: I’ve hinted around a bit at this, but it’s official now: I have a cover artist in the early stages of working on the cover for Tales from the Benevolence Archives, and the characters will be on the cover. I am so fucking stoked for this that I don’t even know what to do about it. Who’s the artist? His name is Jamie Noble Frier. This guy. I cannot wait to see what his early sketches of Brazel and Rhundi look like; we’ll see how much he’s willing to let me post of the early stuff.

I, uh, guess I ought to go work on getting the book finished now. 🙂

Whoopsie

On June 27, 2016June 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking3 Comments

At some point– specifically, on June 4th– I failed to note that this blog is three years old. So… uh… Happy Birthday, a few weeks belated?

Today I purchased pants

On June 26, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Music2 Comments

I need, like, six hours to recover, minimum, from that ordeal.

With that in mind:

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Ignorance Edition

On June 25, 2016June 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories9 Comments

If we were having coffee, we’d… I dunno, talk about Brexit? It seems to be what all the cool kids are doing lately. Trouble is, I don’t really know a damn thing about it, other than that I’m sort of tribally on the Remain side. Every person whose opinion I respect who has been paying attention (mostly actual British people)– and I’m not joking, it’s unanimous— has been on the Remain side, and the one vocal person on the Leave side stole five minutes of my life the day after the vote to rant about immigration. Generally, at this point in my life, “vote against what people who rant about immigration want” has become a useful guideline, as has “vote against what old white people want.” Both appear to be on the same side here, so I guess I’m at least nominally on the other one, though for no better reason than a vague hand-wave and “those people are usually wrong.” I can’t present, like, an actual useful argument.

I would be willing to bet an inconsequential amount of money that it never actually happens, by the way, if that’s something that you’d find entertaining. Remember, the referendum’s not binding. The UK hasn’t actually left the EU yet.

We’d talk about my new job, which is basically all I’ve been doing with my week on the blog, so I won’t spend much time on it here. Needless to say, I’m halfway through the “training” period, and as of Friday was starting to feel like I was learning genuinely useful stuff rather than absorbing corporate policies that are either obvious (Don’t steal! Don’t grab butts!) or bear little relevance to what I’ll actually be doing on a day-to-day basis. I remain super excited about this and look forward to seeing how good I can get at it. I’m just looking forward to having something new to talk about.

It’s a beautiful day outside, so naturally I’m planning on spending most of it inside cleaning. I work at OtherJob tonight, but once we’re done with our coffee date I have at least vague plans to spend the rest of the day cleaning and getting some minor tasks accomplished around the house. Tomorrow is an actual Day Off, and I’m hugely excited about the fact that I’ve worked for six days straight and that “day off” is a viable concept for my no-longer-unemployed ass again. I’m planning on cooking dinner. There will be corn on the cob, as late June seems like a good time for corn on the cob. I’m not sure what else we’re having, but that’s a start.

How’re you?

Friday fooferall

On June 24, 2016June 24, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work, Writing2 Comments

Okay, that was the last day-of-the-week themed post title, I promise. The young lady in the picture is the first result when you GIS “fooferall,” I have no idea who she is or why she appears when you do an image search on that word.

Anyway.

A bit of history on this blog: when I initially started this round of blogging I called the place Infinitefreetime because the joke was I had absolutely no free time at all and therefore it was an insanely dumb idea for me to start blogging again. This was back on Xanga before Xanga killed itself. Then, a month later, of all the people I knew who had started or committed to blogs during whatever month it was, I was just about the only one left standing. Despite the last several months of my life, where I have been unemployed and generally able to do whatever the hell I wanted with my days, the title of the blog was meant to be ironic.

After I get back from OtherJob tomorrow night, I will have gone to work six times in the past six days, for the first time in months. Understand that six-day work weeks have been par for the course for virtually my entire life. This represents a return to normal, not an exception to the rule. This is how my life is supposed to work.

My only real problem, at the moment, is that the 9-5 M-F thing is only going to last about another week. I’m still not entirely sure exactly how much detail I want to reveal about the job, but some bits are going to be unavoidable and “high-end retail” is probably close enough for now. My schedule is about to get a lot more complicated, as the way things work at this place everybody has at least a couple of days where they are there all goddamn day. It’s going to affect my blogging schedule one way or another. I’ve been able to post every day for well over a year by now– I haven’t missed a day since December of 2014. I will be amazed if that record survives for another three weeks. I am categorically not planning on abandoning the blog– it’s too important to my plans for the next several years of my life if not longer than that– but it’s likely that my posting frequency will be changing somewhat or, at the very least, I’m going to have to start pre-scheduling a lot of posts.

Bookwise, I have secured a cover artist for Tales of the Benevolence Archives. I will likely only have one new release this year after initially hoping for two, but I should have that out this fall. I should have a couple of days each week where I’m home and the boy is at school or day care, so I’ll be able to keep working on those days this week. But that’s something else to look forward to. I’m hugely excited about seeing what this artist comes up with. The main reason?

Brazel, Grond and Rhundi will be on the cover of this one.

Booyah.