Kalbzayn's Writing World

Google is now giving books away for free. Kind of. They are providing a way to download PDFs of Public Domain books. The books have been scanned by Google.

I downloaded Huckleberry Finn that LifeHacer points to. It looks good. Definitely readable.

Bookstores are probably not going to like this. Huckleberry Finn may be Public Domain, but I'm pretty sure I can still pay for a copy in any bookstore. When it gets assigned for school, I bet a lot of people start downloading the free copy instead.

Google needs to add a flag in their search to make it easy to find the books that are Public Domain. I coudn't figure it out without doing more research than I am willing to do. I'm sure if I wanted to I could use Google to get a good list of Public Domain books.

Or Project Gutenberg is probably another easy place to find titles. Project Gutenberg is another great resource, in fact, for getting free electronic copies of books. But, they do not offer PDF's. They do offer audio copies of a lot of books. Project Gutenberg scans the books into a text format and then asks volunteer proofreaders to edit where the text gets clobbered. The copies are nice for reading on a Palm type device. I used to be addicted to doing the proofreading during lunch. There are some weird old books out there that are fun to read after society has changed so much over the years.

I love good food. Well, actually, I like Macaroni and Cheese, frozen beef pot pies, and Tombstone Pizzas. Maybe I'm not qualified to be a food critic but I do love to eat.

I just read about a newly discovered monkey that is supposed to be delicious. I can't wait until this little critter shows up at Taco Bell.

Which makes me wonder, if we did start to enjoy snacking on the animals of the rain forest, would that go a long way toward saving that entire ecosystem? Right now, about the only thing the rain forest is good for is tree wood and a semi-permanent bed and breakfast for geeks who like Birkenstocks and infrequent bathing.

If we could get Walmart to start carrying some of the meat of the rainforest in their grocery aisles, there might be some interest in protecting the environment. I see you staring at me like I'm just being silly but I think I'm on to something.

For it to work, we would need to encourage dining on the vegetation of the rain forest, too. If it is just the animals that made their way to our dinner plates, we could just capture a few and breed them in captivity in tiny cages to be slaughtered when they are ready. Like cows.

That would not protect the rain forest.

For that we would need some new fad diet consisting on the mushrooms, fruit, legumes and seeds of the rain forest as well as the lean monkey meat. These would be much harder to grow outside of their native environment. When was the last time you saw a coffee tree in Indiana or Texas. Once the suburban soccer moms toss South Beach aside for the new South Rain Forest diet, billions of dollars would flood into companies who would be forced to protect the rain forest in order to protect the cash flow.

The diet would be part sensible life style and part tree hugging goodness. What self-respecting American could possibly not participate in the diet?

Technorati Tags: rain forest, monkey, South Beach Diet, funny

I normally post a lot of personal stuff over here, but I also have a parenting blog that I am working on. We just learned that J has autism. Rather than rewriting everything over here, I'll just give you a link to what I wrote.

I do not know much about the movie Snakes On A Plane (SOAP) other than the basic plot and how the idea exploded on the internet and feedback from the internet helped shape certain scenes and lines in the movie.

Oh yeah, and the movie sucks.

Seth Godin knew the movie sucked and did not want to see it. Good job Seth. Way to read the tea leaves there.

They expected the movie to bring in around $20 million during the opening weekend. It fell short. Somewhere around $15 million if I remember correctly. Again, if I remember correctly, it cost about $30 million to make.

What a lousy flop for a movie with so much hype! Maybe Seth is correct in thinking:

just because people know who you are doesn't mean they're going to buy what you sell.

Seth seems to be forgetting how most movies make money. Especially bad, campy movies. When this thing hits DVD, it will probably explode. I would imagine right around Christmas time would be a great time to release the DVD.

People will buy it for their friends and dads so they can sit around laughing at the ridiculous movie and waiting for Samuel Jackson's infamous lines. People will sit around in dorm rooms doing shots with each snake attack.

Movies do not have to be good to be popular. When was the last weekend that TNT did not play Showgirls? Bad movies are entertaining. You do not have to sit around looking for deeper meaning.

Leopold (sorry - can't find a permalink so this may have faded from his frontpage) says of SOAP:

It'll be a movie that was better before it was made, will be remembered and celebrated in people's imaginations more than on celluloid. It would have been better if it never was made in the end.

He might be somewhat right. The biggest flaw of this movie is that it will not be bad enough. People are expecting it to be bad. If it has any redeeming qualities at all, that could be a problem. But again, this is a made for DVD and TV movie that just happened to get thrown into the theater first. The best thing that could happen to it could very well be flopping at the theater. That will just spike the attention in buying the DVD and staying up late to watch it on TNT.

Face it. We love a catastrophe. Even when it is orchestrated. Ever watch a building getting demolished or dynamited? Thought so.

Technorati tags: Snakes On A Plane, Samuel Jackson

I have never really paid attention to how important chapter endings are before. After reading a couple Michael Crichton books and a few adventurish stories recently, I noticed that they all do one thing really well. The last few lines of each chapter make you read the next chapter.

You hear a lot of talk about making sure your story opens a bang. This is the moment when the reader decides to bother with the book or not.

I have read a lot about making sure the ending captures the reader, too. This is the moment when the reader decides whether to buy another of your books or not.

People do not talk about the structure of chapters as often. When you are reading a book before going to bed, what is it that keeps you awake until 3am reading the last page? The chapter endings.

If a chapter ends, "Yeah, we'll have to talk about that more tomorrow," then guess what. I'm going to read about it tomorrow.

If a chapter ends, "'Yeah, we'll have to talk about that more tomorrow....' At that moment the monster emerged from the closet and bit off Marge's head," there's a good chance I'm going to stick around to see what is going on.

The problem with ending chapters with such a dramatic hook is that the book can quickly become hokey. I find myself yelling, "Come on. Nobody has that many bad things happen to them."

But, in reality, that is why the big hook endings work. We do not read books to live in reality. We read to escape. If somebody has a problem, it better be bigger than mine, or I'll go back to doing my own chores.

I do not expect to win any literary awards. I would like to entertain a few people now and then. While writing my next story, I am going to remember to focus on keeping the pages turning by ending my chapters with a bang...even if I have to kill somebody to do it.

By old I don't mean ancient. I mean old like middle aged. Old meaning no longer any hope of ever being "cool" again. Old meaning my favorite music is on retro channels.

I already have a few signs. The kids are starting school. My beard and temples are graying. I can't eat and drink whatever I want without putting on some weight.

The other day, I was driving on a busy 4 lane road. There was an additional middle turn lane.

There was a big gap between me and the car in front of me (because of the traffic light timing...I'm not getting that old). A car in a parking lot on my right started to turn left into the turn lane. At the same time, a car in the parking lot on the left turned left into the turn lane. They almost ran right into each other and we all had to wait for them to move around each other.

Feeling I deserved a bit of road rage, I tried to yell. I noticed the driver of the car from the right was about 70. Perfect. Old men are easy road rage targets. But wait, the driver of the car from the left was 18-20. Oh those punk kids chap my hide.

Wait a second. Did I just say "punk kids"? Did I just say "chap my hide"?

Great. Now I can't figure out if I dislike old men or young kids. Must be time for middle age. I might have to go shopping for a Corvette tonight.

I bumped into an old friend from grade school the other day. Actually, I stopped by his parents house and got his phone number, but do you really care about the details?

After talking to him on the phone, I started having a bunch of memories of grade school through high school. One of my big dorky habits was playing computer role playing games. I also enjoyed reading fantasy books. I was always annoyed that some of the of the freedom and common sense in the books did not translate well to the games. I got tired of fetching the watch-a-ma-callit and bringing it to dork in the hut just to get a few more gold so that hopefully I could eventually buy a better sword.

The games were fun in their own way, but when you tried to imagine a real person dealing with the restrictions of the game engines, they always seemed a little absurd. I used to play Bard's Tale a lot. I remember a couple spots where you walk into a little tiny room and have to fight 396 really large creatures. How did they all fit in the room? Were they part clown?

I've been desperate for a writing project that sounded fun, so I'm going to write a story that is based off of how the games actually played. And, since I have no desire to ever get "published," I'll probably post the story here or on another site that I create for the purpose.

Then comes the real question. How long should the story be? A short story would be fun for picking a certain ridiculousness and making fun of it. After all, how many world changing adventures begin with a group of adventures going into the basement of the bar to fetch some wine or chase away some rats? But, I don't really have trouble finishing short stories. I want to try and finish something longer.

A novel would be fun. Follow the journey from beginning dweebs to mountain shaking heros where they combat the great evil overlord and the epic battle to end all epic battles...at least until the sequel. But, I don't really feel like committing to a project that takes that long. I'm hoping to get something done in a couple months.

So, enter the novella. I used to love reading Stephen King's novellas. I enjoyed Leopold McGinnis' novella, The Red Fez. The stories are just long enough to really develop, but not long enough to drag. That's where I want to start. I'll send my dweebs into the basement armed with only their steely determination and see how far they go. Once it looks like they might have a real mission on their hands, I'll try to find a nice low level boss to battle and then call it a day. If people like it, I can write something bigger to track the rest of their adventure. If it sucks or I never finish it, I haven't wasted a year...unless it takes a year to write 100ish pages.

Time to break out some of the old games and look for the things real people would never have to do.

If you want me to let you know when it is ready (if it is ever ready), send me an email at kalbzayn [at] gmail.com and I'll make a little list of people to notify. I won't give the information to the government. And I probably won't sell the list to anybody. That's more than you can say for most companies these days.

By the way, my friend is a seriously talented artist. If you are looking into some cover work or anything like that, let me know and I'll see if he is interested and available.

Since giving up pop on May 28th (except for 1 on purpose vacation day and 2 bad days), I've gone from 218 to 208 pounds. Sweet...or maybe lack thereof.

My pants are getting more comfortable, but I won't need to buy new pants for a while since I bought the ones that I have when I weighed 195ish and was hoping to lose a couple pounds.

We're getting into football/holiday season where I normally indulge a little more often. But, I'm also going to the gym more often (as opposed to the never that I've been doing for a couple years). It will be interesting to see which habit wins out in my battle to get back below 200.

So what does all of this have to do with the title. A human head weighs about 10 pounds. But didn't we learn that from Jerry Maguire?

My mother-in-law found a couple really couple vintage Korean jackets that a relative brought back from the Korean War. She is selling one of them on eBay.

Go check it out. It has some pretty cool embroidery and is reversible. That's why it is blue in some of the pictures and green in others.

Unfortunately I'm quite a bit taller than your average person, so I can't put any pressure on my MIL to let me inherit it to wear around town.

In addition to being a very cool collectible, once they sell, my MIL will be able to get broadband. She lives way out in the country and it is not as easy as just calling up SBC and scheduling an appointment. I'm pretty sure their only option is through DirectTV or whatever they are called these days.

It looks like there are about 4 days left so bid early and bid often. Go pick up a unique Christmas gift.

My schedule has dramatically shifted recently. I finished my high pressure work projects, made decent progress with some home projects, and hosted a toddler slumber party.

So what could possible be left for me to do.

1) Daddy day care. I'm taking off Monday through Wednesday next week and staying home with the kids. I have not watched the kids for that continuous of a block in as long as I can remember. I'm looking forward to lots of hours playing puppet show, driving trucks, and playing in the backyard. We're also having a garage sale on Saturday at my parents' house. Rebecca will be handling the selling while I entertain the kids at our house.

2) Painting. I finished painting the tough spot over the stairs and the hallway at the top of the stairs and then lost my momentum. Starting tonight, I'm going to work on getting the bathroom patched, primed and painted.

3) Work. Even though I have 3 days off next week, I'm still not looking forward to Thursday. We are having a mandatory fun night after work on Thursday. We're going to Medieval Times. I've been there before and it is entertaining but I just hate mandatory fun. Especially since I received the invitation earlier this week. Would it kill them to schedule this stuff in advance? Another problem I have with Medieval Times is their menu. Everybody gets the same meal which includes chicken and ribs. Sounds good except for those of us with poultry allergies. I need to remember to have the person scheduling the event ask about an alternative meal plan for me. On the plus side, they have a torture museum that is pretty neat and creepy.

4) Back to the gym. Because of the projects around the house, we've been bad about going to the gym for the last couple weeks. We went again on Tuesday and have plans for tonight which will hopefully get us back into the routine.

5) Websites. I mentioned last week that I've been working on some websites. Here is the list.

Be A Good Dad
Webby Thoughts
Talk Hawkeyes

I was expecting to develop them over the next couple months and see what happened. Then a story on the Be A Good Dad site got picked up by Reddit, somehow became popular and brought in about 3000 pageviews. Right when it was starting to slow down, it got picked up on MSNBC. The page is a list of interesting articles that they writer visits throughout the day and a brief comment on them. That brought in about 2000 more pageviews. Just to put that in perspective, I've had about 5000 pageviews on a brand new site over the last two days. This blog has received just under 10,000 pageviews since I started it back in October. Weird. It'll be rough when the pageviews go back to about 20 a day tomorrow.