Pirates Hijack Duane's Novel off Somali Coast

Today, the writing of Duane Gundrum was hijacked by pirates in international waters near Somalia, the European Naval Force reported this morning.

Somali pirates attacked Duane’s latest novel approximately 600 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia. He was completing an intense scene involving a complicated, triangular romance between his protagonist, a nice Southern girl, and a mysterious woman known only as the Klaw. Complete details on their complicated relationship is unknown at this time, as the author was deep in the middle of a plot variation that could have resulted in either a twisted relationship, involving a previous lover or some kind of plot twist that might have introduced yet another character who has not yet been identified.

Why Duane and his writing was traveling so close to the Somali border is unknown at this time, although it is believed that his journey may have been influenced by the concept known in certain circles as Writer’s Block.

The Somali pirates are believed to have kidnapped numerous passengers on Duane’s cruiser, although sources have yet to reveal any names. However, a recent communiqué from the Somali pirates indicates that they are holding a plot point prisoner and are demanding $13 million dollars (US) in ransom. They threaten to “delete the hard drive” if they are not paid off as demanded.

European Naval Force commanders have indicated that they have no intentions of launching a rescue attempt at this time. Admiral Franz Heckler of the British Command Vessel Trinity stated, “We do not know anything at this time, and to be honest, Duane is kind of an unknown writer pretty much everywhere, so I’m really not sure anyone cares.”

An image of the pirate leader who Duane would REALLY like to find


Duane was contacted by email, to which he responded, “How did you get this email? Did my girlfriend put you up to this?” There is no indication at this time if his response was sincere, or if it was, in fact, some type of code that really means, “I can’t talk right now because Somali pirates have kidnapped my hard drive with my latest novel on it, but I really like your news program and recommend everyone watch it every hour that it airs.”

The US Navy responded to our request for information with a simple dispatch: “If we see pirates, we blow them out of the water. What was the question again?”

Former literary victim of Somali pirates, Elric Longfellow commented on this story with the following: “If only these pirates would target one of those stupid vampire novels. Just once….”

We will continue to report on this story as more information develops.

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Stickman Will Be Returning Soon!

My comic strip, The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Lego Spaceman, will be returning soon. I just finished the conception story and art for the first few new entries. As soon as I can hook up a scanner, I will be producing these and adding them to the site. The new stories will begin with the introduction of Stickman's new pets, and then I'll be slowly integrating the introduction of the third main character, the lego spaceman.

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People Are Still Not Clear on How to Do an April Fool's Joke

I've talked about humor here before, and unfortunately I'm revisiting the concept because people still don't get it. Not that they read my blog anyway, but they still don't get it. I'll say it again: A joke is not funny if people end up pissed off after you tell the joke. If they're hurt in the process of telling the joke, you really need to relearn the concept of humor.

An example is the Republican Party. Just because you insulted the Democratic president on April 1st does NOT make it an April Fool's joke. It just means you chose an appropriate day to be inappropriate. Here's what they did: Obama Insult. Basically, for those not going to the article's site, the Republicans thought it would be a hoot to pretend to like Obama's ideas, and then they end their spot by talking about how they're joking and Obama is still essentially the anti-Christ (or something like that). Their actual joke is that they liked Obama's plan to cure global warming by:

"by replacing cars with low-emission unicorns” and achieving an unemployment rate of "negative 39 percent," among other “accomplishments."

I'm sorry, but insulting the person you're trying to punk doesn't come off as humorous. It comes off as insulting.

Google thought it was being clever this morning by changing its name to Topeka. On the surface, it might be kind of funny that Google decided to change its name to a town, but there's a darker joke being played here, and that's a direct slap at Topeka, which is trying very hard to become a site for a Google project (which playfully changed its name to Google for the chance of being recognized by Google). Well, here's where that joke turns really sour: If Topeka doesn't get the project it's vying for, then Google's little April Fool's joke goes from being playful to being straight out insulting, because it shows that it used Topeka as a brunt of its humor and had no intentions of actually awarding Topeka for actually going out of its way to honor Google in the first place. Instead, they would have made a grandiose gesure for nothing and got punk'd instead by Google.

That's not to say that some companies haven't got into the spirit of the day with just straight out fun. A couple of good examples are Starbucks and Blizzard.

Starbucks announced that it has two new coffee sizes: Plenta and Micra. Plenta is so big that it can be used as a rain hat or a lampshade, while Micra is only two ounces big. Fun all around cause it's a quick, one shot joke.

Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, had two announcements on its main page. The first is somewhat cruel, but playful, because it pokes fun at players who are obsessed with equipment in the game (often referred to as Gearscore, from the site that tracks this in game). They announced a new tracking system that will be part of the game that is essentially a vertical line that continues to grow larger as your "e.p.e.e.n." continues to increase in the game. It plays on the Internet term "e-peen", which is kind of risque to explain otherwise. The verbage used to explain the article is filled with euphemisms and double entendres that are all sexually related, and it reads more like a Viagra commercial.

Their second ad was just fun. It advertises a new virtual reality visor you can buy that can be used to totally immerse yourself into the game. When it comes to ordering it, it retails for $14,999.00, and takes you directly to their store site, where it lists the product as "Sold Out". There appears to now be a new message on their site that indicates they are now advertising a new World of Warcraft "matchmaking service", which gives me the impression their Devs are going to be playing at this joke all day long.

Well, that's all for now. Nothing impacting, but just something to share for the day.

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The Struggles of Writing Humor

In the many writing books I have read over the years, one of the toughest writing processes is often considered to be that of humor. Part of the problem is that it can sometimes be considered difficult to do humor due to numerous reasons, ranging from the author not being funny to not being able to translate humor to the averge person.

I've been writing humor most of my life, starting off with many short stories I wrote, up until one of my latest novels. In almost all of my writing, there has been a sense of "duane", or humor to the writing. My characters were always known for having little asides that add laughter to what can sometimes be a very serious subject matter. It takes nuance to be able to do this, but over the years I've managed to craft this part of my, well, craft.

Part of the problem of writing humor is the perception that it's not "real" writing. And that's one of the things that has bothered me for many years. My very first submission of a short story to an editor was "The Ides of March", which was my send up on horror, which involved writing myself into the story itself (the writer, not me as a character). At one point, the writer becomes involved in the story, and the characters throw a fit because I didn't belong, and like most jokes, it becomes one of those "you'd have to read it to understand it". But the response I received from the first editor I ever sent it to was something I remember word for word: "A series of jokes, alas, does not make a story". But it was a story. And it was funny.

What I discovered is that because I wrote humor, I was shown a different part of the writer's business market. Quite often, an editor feels he or she doesn't have to take you seriously or even treat you with respect, because you write humor rather than "something serious". Over the years, some of my humor writing has received some of the harshest responses from editors. Some of it has been published. But sometimes, out of nowhere, I'll get really obnoxious, mean-spirited responses from editors who I really feel think that because there's humor involved, they don't have to be as professional with the writer as they would someone who sent something "serious".

Now, humor isn't all that I do. It's just something I like to do. And I have discovered over the years that I can be quite successful at it. Some of my strongest published writing has been humor, and the responses I've received from readers has been really great.

But having said that, I wanted to talk about honing the craft when it comes to humor writing, because a lot of people don't understand how to do it. I honestly believe that a lot of people think a bunch of jokes does substitute for story. It doesn't. That should be obvious, but quite often it is not. I once mentored a young woman in writing some years back who was trying her hand at writing. She couldn't get it down on paper. She was a very funny person, in person, but she just couldn't convey that humor when she tried to write it down. She would constantly fall back on trying to point out that she was trying to be funny. I kept trying to tell her that what I perceived as her conflict was that she wasn't sure enough of her own humor to be able to convince anyone else. We never really got over that hurdle. She went back to romance fiction, and that's what she writes to this day.

For me, I did a lot of stories and articles that helped me figure out how to deliver a humorous story. But something else came along for me that I never suspected would help, and that was speech and debate (Forensics). I wrote a lot of stories during this time, for both myself and other people who were competing. I did a lot of humor during this time because it was just so much fun to be able to get an immediate reaction from your humor. You don't normally get that as a writer; you just have to hope that somewhere out there someone is reading your writing and laughing, and for the right reasons. With Forensics, I was able to craft a funny story and have people laughing right in front of me. It helped me to figure out timing, something that Steve Martin has pointed out is one of the hardest features for a comedian to nail down in a routine. He uses humor to explain it, but he makes his point well. Since then, I often think about my audience in front of me while writing humor; I figure that if I can see them laughing, then I know I've achieved my goal. If it doesn't work, and I know when it doesn't, I rework it.

My latest big project was The Ameriad, a novel written in the style of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The difference was, I wrote it in character, as the worst translator in history, who was good at getting the words right, but just not that good at nuance and understanding what he was really translating. This allowed me to write a novel on several levels, something I always wanted to do. I was writing metaphor, allusion, symbolism, slapstick humor, and nuanced humor. It was designed so that both a scholar and a novice could both read it and get something out of it with neither the scholar feeling that he or she was being talked up to nor the novice feeling that he or she was being talked down to. It made the writing of this novel very difficult, but in the end, it helped me reach the next rung of writing, something I think a lot of writers don't understand.

Because what happens with a lot of writers is that they spend decades trying to put out writing, but spend less effort on honing the craft, even though they say they are, not realizing the significance of the act. Good writers stretch themselves each time they write so that they are not writing the same thing over and over again. An example of an author who stopped doing this a long time ago is Clive Cussler, who is arguably one of my favorite authors of all time. But he doesn't reinvent himself every time he writes a novel. You can read Raise the Titanic and get the same sense of writing you get from his latest novel. That doesn't make him any less of a great writer. It just means he stopped trying to better himself a long time ago. Take an author like Doris Lessing, and this is someone who pushes the envelope every time she puts pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard...don't know how she really writes).

That was the sense I had when I went into the process of writing The Ameriad. It was meant to be funny, but it was also meant to be seriously socially relevant. And that's what makes it a struggle to write humor. You can't just tell a bunch of jokes and hope people laugh. You have to be challenging your readers as well as yourself so that the humor means something. I don't think a lot of writers get that. Some do, and it's wonderful whenever you come across one that does it well. I can't claim to be a success at it, but I'll certainly admit that I try each and every time the next story is begun.

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It's Just a Joke...really

ESPN has made a politically correct move and suspended one of its reporters for statements he made about a female colleague on the air. Supposedly, he made negative comments about the outfit she was wearing, and after that the heads at ESPN went nuts. The commentary has been all over the place since then, with people either saying it's much ado about nothing, ESPN overreacted, or Kornheiser should be fired, skewed and napalmed with extreme prejudice.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because it brings up a subject I've wanted to talk about for awhile, and that's the whole idea of comedy and humor.

Years ago, when I was in the service and out of the Academy, I was required to attend a basic training unit (I attended a lot of them as part of my assignments while working for CID and CI). I remembered I was in this battle of wits with this really stupid PFC. He was trying to insult me, and my response was to take every insult he waged, agree and then use an additive process to show how he was now contradicting himself. By the time I was done, he looked really foolish, wanted to fight, and let's just say that the situation did not end well for him.

BUT right after that, and because of that, it got me to thinking about humor. I was a very flippant young man at the time. I was quick to use a cynical response to unarm an opponent, and much of my humor was directly insulting in some way. At the time, I thought that was what constituted "funny".

Well, at that time, I made a decision because I felt really dirty after that conversation because even though EVERYONE was laughing with me, they were all laughing AT HIM, and something didn't seem right about that. I began to see humor as something that could be very negative. After that day, I made a vow to avoid ever using negative humor that hurt someone else. I no longer found it funny, and therefore, I would no longer try to gain favor for using that style of humor.

What I discovered is that there are very many people who ONLY know that type of humor as "funny". As I was reading through the responses to the Kornheiser story (the guy who made the stupid comments about his female colleague), I started to notice how many people would say something like: "you people don't understand humor, so leave him alone", and all I could think was that perhaps a lot of people don't understand humor. The ability to poke fun at someone else's expense should never be considered funny to an enlightened community, yet there is so much of that type of behavior in our society. From political pundits to late night talk show hosts, negative humor is used so much at the expense of other people. Oh, we justify it by using such comments as "he's a public person" or "he or she should have known better". But in the end, it's humor that comes at the expense of another individual.

One solution to this problem for me back then was to think through each attempt at making a joke. How I used to do this was think to myself, "would everyone find this funny, including the subject of the humor itself?" If the answer was no, then it wasn't funny to me. It took me many years to cement this into my psyche, but it was something that had to be done because I was no longer finding insults or negative commentary to be funny. I don't even find it funny when it is done by very good comedy folk; I tend to be the only one in the room who doesn't laugh, and I have come to a comfortable understanding that I'd rather be that person than the one who joins in with them.

Unfortunately, very few people agree with me. Or they agree, but in the end they practice a different processing when it comes to such humor, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

What I'd like to add to the interesting part of this observation is that I do succeed in creating a lot of humor on a daily basis, both in my writings and in person. But it's never negative towards an individual. Oh, it may still by cynical and biting at times, but there's never a person sitting in the next cubicle, thinking "I wish he wouldn't use me as the brunt of his jokes all of the time."

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WWGD: What Would Gumby Do?

These days, we seem to be lacking in true American heroes that help us define our existence. I mean, there was George Washington who cut down a cherry tree and, um, didn't lie about it. Okay, you can only get so far on that one. I mean, the other day, I was robbing a liquor store and then the police caught me and asked me, "Duane, did you rob this liquor store?" And all I could think to myself was what would George Washington say? He would turn to the police officers and tell them that yes, he robbed that liquor store with his Gatt, stealing the $14.72 out of the cash register to fund his overwhelming crayon sniffing habit. Well, I realized that I was in possession of the two Misty Green crayons that I had previously sniffed, and there was little I could do but either tell the truth, as my George Washington idol would demand, or I needed a new role model. And immediately I realized that George Washington couldn't fill my needs. I needed someone different. Someone like Gumby.



You see, when faced with such a dilemma, Gumby wouldn't just stand up and say, "Yes, officer, I robbed the liquor store." No, he would realize that others depended upon him, like Pokey, the orange horsey that pal'd around with Gumby. Not only that, but there was also Prickle, Gumby's dinosaur friend, and Goo, whatever the hell that strange blob character was supposed to be. The point is, Gumby had friends that counted on him, as do I, like my stuffed animals, like Elmer the frog and Joshua the often misunderstood penguin. If Gumby was asked if he robbed the liquor store, he would have used his powers of elasticity to find a way out of the mess, quite often by morphing himself into a train or a wall or whatever else he thought of at the time.



You see, Gumby was always aware that the blockheads were out to get him. They were evil, and they would use whatever powers they could find to beat poor Gumby. Unfortunately, they would do anything, like accuse Gumby of robbing liquor stores. Okay, they never actually accused him of that, but if they thought they could get Gumby to admit to it, they'd accuse him of robbing liquor stores, so poor Gumby would have to avoid admitting to it, much like me.

Because the blockheads of the world are always out to get the inner Gumbys in us. We know, and they know it, but unfortunately that type or argumentation never holds up in a court of law. Believe me, I've tried.

So, whenever you are faced with some theoretical complication like a potential criminal case involving a liquor store robbery, or maybe an actual liquor store robbery, remember the important letters of WWGD, or What Would Gumby Do? Gumby would never admit to robbing the liquor store because that's just not Gumby. George Washington would admit it but that's just because he's not as smart as Gumby was. He took the rap for that whole cherry tree thing, and where is he now? Do you see him on TV these days as the role model for anything? Not a chance. The cherry tree lobbyist group totally screwed him over, turning completely against everything he stood for. Because the cherry tree lobby is so powerful in our government, poor George Washington these days stands for everything against cherry trees, like corruption and illegal wire tapping. But not Gumby. If you polled a lot of people about anything involving Gumby, you'd get nothing but great results.



Need I say more?

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Korean M&Ms May Be Racist

"...which is why you should never actually lick a nuclear fuel rod," said Chief Engineer Akmar Hurreisaba.

In other news, it was reported today by our Legospaceman affiliate in Seoul, South Korea (the Korea with all the artillery weapons aimed at it by the evil crazy guy in the north), that the popular brand of candy, M&M's, which is owned by Mars, Incorporated, may actually be racist. With this story is the legospaceman.

Legospaceman: Yeah, Bunny, it's true. This reporter was analyzing a package of peanut M&Ms purchased in South Korea for...um...quality purposes, when he discovered that the picture on the front of the bag shows five happy M&M characters lounging around together. What wasn't realized, until a second look, was that there are six M&M characters, and one of them was missing. It turns out that M&Ms "forgot" to include the brown M&M character.

Now, while this could have been a simple mistake, or perhaps a casting problem during the shooting of the picture, such as a situation where the brown M&M failed to show up for the photograph, we then started examining the other different bags of M&Ms to determine how frequent the brown M&M was missing. It turns out that on all other bags of M&Ms in this particular convenient store in Seoul, South Korea, the brown M&M is not included on the package. But wait until you find out what we discovered when we opened the package."

Bunny Anchorwoman: We will return to this story after this message about how much better Reese's Pieces are than M&Ms candies.

(small pause for a commercial break where capitalist scum try to sell things to you)

Bunny Anchorwoman: And we're back. It turns out that the legospaceman uncoverered more interesting details.

Legospaceman: Yes, Bunny, I did a check of the M&Ms website, and it turns out that even though there is a brown M&M in the packages, the official website no longer acknowledges that this brown M&M exists. Something is seriously wrong here, and we're only beginning to uncover the mystery behind this obvious cover-up.

Realizing that just checking web sites was not going to be enough, so we sent in our undercover reporter and we managed to meet up with a well known person named...well, Bob. Here's a picture of him.


Yes, it turns out that Bob was the original brown M&M, and he wants his story known.

This is not all, the legospaceman also did a quantified study of the bag of peanut M&Ms he bought and discovered that brown M&Ms make up 32% of the entire bag, even though the bag includes representatives of 7 different colors of M&Ms. We will bring you more on this story as it develops. Back to you, Bunny.

Bunny Anchorwoman: Thank you, legospaceman. Let's hope Bob gets what's coming to him. No one should ever have to go through that sort of thing. Now, in fashion news, it appears that attractive women are starting to get all the attention again. With this story is....

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I think I'm getting better

Today is the first day where I've actually been able to read while wearing my glasses. For those who haven't been following my blog or facebook notes, I've been having trouble seeing with my glasses on because of a medical condition. The belief was that over time the condition would start getting better (hopefully) and that my sight would start getting better as well. That was weeks ago, and I was really concerned during this time. Today, however, I've actually been able to read normally unlike previous times in the recent past. There's still a bit of fuzziness, but that just means there's still more to adjust, but for the moment, let's just say it's so much nicer being able to read this way and not get a headache every fifteen minutes from not using my glasses.



Not much else going on. My thesis is still going through its Kafka-esque journey of approval from the Graduate Deparment. My God, I never thought ONE person could make it so difficult for a thesis to be accepted. Turns out she "lost" it last week by placing it on her file cabinet, or her desk, or wherever it was in her office. Kat had to point at it and say "there it is", and the women STILL tried to blame Kat for her own screw up. And this is the school that said I wasn't "qualified" to work there when I applied to be an employee while attendng UOP. Apparently, the word "qualified" has a lot of humorous definitions at University of the Pacific.



So, I am assuming I graduate this month. Who knows? They'll probably do something else really stupid. Everything else up until now has been a nightmare with this process. Why are they doing this? It's not like I was an enemy of UOP or the Graduate School at any time? Everyone else seems to be doing just fine with the process. Is it because I'm not physically there and unable to micromanage the process, so they figure I'm easy pickens for screwing with for no reason whatsoever? I don't really understand this.



As for here, my boss is having me create something a little different than I am here for; he wants me to create a debate teacher's program, so that we can train English instructors, specifically the Korean ones, to teach debate as well as English. After my initial uneasiness with the project, I'm actually developing the plan forward. I briefed two of the teachers on Wednesday, and while I can see them being a bit apprehensive (they have zero debate experience whatsoever), I kept trying to reassure them that this would not be a problem, and that with some work, they can actually do pretty well with this. What I don't think they realize (or maybe they do) is that the completion of this project will make them a lot more employable in South Korea, because there are a few schools that do the English/Debate thing here. It's really hard to find qualified people to do it, because a rational debate teacher isn't going to want to go and ALSO teach English for three days of the week. Yeah, I guess I'm really not always the most rational person.



That's about it. Wanted to share some slightly better news than usual. Been doing a lot of complaining lately, although I had a good reason to be doing so. They don't really share any of the same holidays with the US here, so what we do get off is Christmas and New Year's. Unfortunately, both of those days fall on a Thursday, which is my normal day off, so that means they won't be anything special for me when it comes to work. They don't give compensation days or anything like that. I'll just have the normal days off, and have to console myself with the fact that at least I'm not having to work on those days as well. Being in a different country can be a bit frustrating sometimes.



I weighed myself yesterday, and I'm at 147 pounds, which is somewhat near (or at) my ideal weight. My clothes don't fit anymore, and that's a problem because everything I have to wear is many inches too big. I really don't have the money to go out and buy new sets of clothing. This means tightening my belt, which is also a bit of a problem because I've run out of notches to tighten up with, so I either have to buy a new belt, or I'll have to do what I did when I was poor: create a new hole in the belt. But can I really complain, however? I've lost a lot of weight, and it's not some crash diet where the weight goes right back on once I stop being on the crash diet. This is the normal way I eat every day now, and my weight has melted off as a result. I'm kind of happy, foodwise, so there's really no reason to complain.



I sent my novel, The Ameriad, to Ricia Mainhardt's Literary Agency, and I'm still waiting for a response. She's having one of her readers take a look at it, so we'll see what happens. I've received mostly rejections from everyone to whom I've sent my other stuff. As soon as I finish the final edit on Rumors of War, I intend to start sending out query letters to agents for that one as well. It sucks that it takes so much effort to get published properly, but I'm hoping that once it happens, it will all have been worth it.



So, how am I occupying most of my free time? World of Warcraft. I figured that if I can't escape Korea and go to America, at least I can escape Korea and go to Azeroth (the land of World of Warcraft). I've been playing on the Horde these days with my hunter, and he's now 43rd level. I'm in a pretty decent guild on one of the Oceania servers (playing here because at least that way I'm closer to the same time zone as everyone else). Yeah, I know some people treat the game as some geek thing, and that's all right. But it does occupy a lot of free time these days, and believe me, it's been a lifesaver over the last few weeks, because things haven't really been all that great, and sometimes it's really nice to have something like that to take your mind off of real world things.



That's pretty much it for now. I'm at work right now, about to get ready for Writing and Composition classes with some middle school kids. One positive thing so far about being here is that I've found myself really liking the kids. They may get annoying at time, but that's because they're kids, and that's what they're supposed to do. But they like me, and I feel they respect me as well. I listen to the classrooms of other teachers, and the kids seem almost completely out of control. In my classes, they participate, and we get along without that loud, racuous noise I hear from the other classes. I'm not sure why it doesn't happen in my classes, but I'm not a strict teacher either. I do make them laugh a lot, and I think that has something to do with it. It also took weeks of working with the kids before they started to warm up to me; I have one of those strange senses of humor that takes time to get used to. One day, with one of my classes, it seemed like things were never going to get better (it was feeling like a bad class), so I just started talking about how squirrels are evil, carry machine guns, and one must always be on guard to warn if squirrels might attack. That, alone, did it. The kids have so much fun with this little joke, that sometimes they'll answer questions, using squirrels as the prompt to lead them to answer even more questions. The thing was: I wasn't planning to use this dumb joke as a starting pointi to anything, but it just worked. Another day, I talked about mind-controlling teddy bears, and it just worked great with another group of kids. It's partly because it's absurd, and kids often live in an absurd world where things don't always make sense. It creates a strange bond between the teacher and the students, when both can joke about the same thing, yet still manage to get the work done that is required. Anyway, I'm just pontificating about something I don't really understand anyway.

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Someone you know is looking for you!

I get these really annoying emails all of the time from spammers that try to look like they're legit. Some of these come from some legitimate sources, like Classmates.com, but they're still spam and they drive me nuts. One of the recent waves of spam messages has been the "Someone you know is looking for you!" Then you click it and it takes you to some social networking or singles site that wants you to sign up so you can "discover" who it is that "might be" looking for you. If you've ever been stupid enough to sign up, you discover that no one is actually looking for you, but now you have another gateway to lots and lots of spam.

So I started wondering: Who would ever be looking for me anyway? I mean, I'm on Facebook, so if someone wants to find me there, that's okay. Some people have. I've found some of my old friends, too. Good thing.

However, I realize there might be "other" people looking for me, too. First off, there are people who want to sell me things. Things I don't need. Things I don't want. But they will continue to send me information telling me how much I need a Viagra pill, penis enlargement surgery or new credit (I honestly think there's a connection between the three, but I'm not smart enough to make that connection). Eventually, they go directly into the spam filter.

Then there are bill collectors. Well, the ones that NEED to find me have found me. Anyone else is pretending to be a bill collector, or is someone I never would have paid in the first place.

Then there's the Army. Yes, the Army still keeps trying to convince me that I should go back into the Army...as an enlisted member. Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen. I'm going to go back into the service, join as an enlisted member this time, take orders from some 23 year old with a BA degree who thinks that BA degree and ROTC training at UCLA makes him a natural leader. My 2 MA degrees, nearly completed Ph.d., numerous BA/BS degrees, combat service and my West Point training really doesn't agree with that supposition. I asked an Army recruiter why I can't go back in as an officer, and they don't really know why the age restrictions were raised to 42 for enlisted but still remain around 30 for officers. That's a nonstarter.

So who else might be looking for me? Ex-girlfriends? Like the crazy one that I still fear might be looking for me? The one that talked about the different ways she would like to dismember the entire male population (where I was affectionately referred to as "the last victim")? The one that sent me an itemized bill when I finally convinced her that our relationship was over? For the record, all of those are the same woman.

So, I'm just not all that thrilled whenever I discover that "someone I know is looking for me!". No, I prefer they not find me. My stuffed animals and I are doing okay without being found.

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Those brilliant technicians at Fry's Electronics

I've been gone at a tournament for the weekend, and I just returned a few minutes ago. But I had to share a story with you about my experience at Fry's Electronics near DVC College in Northern California. I was there with a few of my fellow Forensics coach friends, and we were just wandering through the store when Jeff asked a salesperson on the floor where he might find something. After receiving directions, I then turned to the salesperson and asked, "Where might I find a Flux Capacitor?"

The sales guy said that he thought they keep those at the desk, pointing to a place where a few other employees were working. At this time, Kat and Jeff both started laughing. But seeing as how this joke still had some more steam, I went to the desk and said: "The other guy over there said I might find a flux capacitor here. Any idea where they are?" The employee I spoke to started looking down the rows of components, searching for a flux capacitor, but he could not find one. So he turned to his partner who was at the desk and asked if he knew where one might be.

Meanwhile, Kat was losing it and couldn't stifle her laughter, so she wandered down the aisle where she couldn't be seen. I kept my cool and stood there while both of these employees looked for my flux capacitor. Finally, the senior of the two of them said for his partner to search their web site to see if they had any flux capacitors in stock. So, he went to use the computer, but his computer was having trouble making a connection. So, he went to another computer and typed in "Flux Capacitor". Unfortunately, the inventory management of Fry's Electronics indicated that there were no flux capacitors in the system. The employee asked me to read the spelling and asked if it was spelled correctly. I said it was. Then his partner tried entering the information into his computer, thinking that maybe his computer might be able to bring it up in their inventory better than the previous computer. I guess their inventory has different results, depending upon what computer you use. But unfortunately, his computer couldn't find a flux capacitor either. So, he then tried searching for a "flux" and about nine items came up, but as I looked through the list, I indicated that none of the responses were the one I was seeking.

So, the two guys turned to the female employee and asked her if she knew where I might find a flux capacitor. She didn't know, but she also checked the output on the screen of the computer before she shrugged her shoulders.

I was about to escalate my request to a manager before our main coach called us and indicated he needed us back at the tournament. So, we left.

But needless to say, we laughed harder than we've laughed in a very long time.

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Chuck Norris and the Internet

I don't know how many follow this sort of thing, but if you've been on the Internet for any length of time, you've probably run into the joke that goes something like: " If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris, you may be only seconds away from death."

Well, it appears that the joke has taken a new turn. It is being used in political ads, with the permission of Chuck Norris. Of course it would have to be WITH his permission. No one would want Chuck Norris mad at him. Ever. Nuff said.

Here's Huckabee's ad: Huckabee's Chuck Norris link.

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Sometimes, you just gotta love The Onion

Final Harry Potter Book Blasted For Containing Spoilers

NEW YORK—Harry Potter fans throughout the world were shocked, disappointed, and outraged to learn last week that J.K. Rowling's 750-page...

Countdown: 364 days

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