Things that go bump in the night
A couple just walked past my house while having a heated argument. A lot of people don’t realize that everything they say while walking down this street in Venice can be heard by any resident with their windows open. Anyway, they were arguing about if Paranormal Activity was just a movie or a real document of actual events.
He was making the point that it was just a movie, with actors and a script. She was arguing that it was a documentary made by the people in the film of events that were taking place around them. He noted that if something like that had actually happened it would be on the news and not in movies theaters. She said it happens all the time and no one covers it, but this guy was just lucky enough to film it. He said he was pretty sure there was no documented stories of ghosts murdering people. She pointed out that the media never covers important issues like that and if he wasn’t being such a fucking asshole he would go see it and would know, as she did, that it was real. He commented that nothing he could see on screen would change the facts that it is a fictional story.
She suggested that he wasn’t going to get laid tonight because she couldn’t believe she was dating such a closed minded jerk.
My guess is there’s another factor weighing a little heavier on that, possibly that he’s dating an idiot.
Facebook Events to Google Calendar
I just synced them. You can do the same with these easy steps…
- In Facebook, go to your EVENTS page.
- At the top of that page click EXPORT EVENT
- You’ll get a pop up window with a URL, copy it.
- In Google Cal, on the bottom left you’ll see ‘Other Calendars’ and below that a link to ADD. Click ADD
- One of the new options you’ll be presented with is ADD BY URL, select that
- Paste the URL from Facebook where it asks for it.
- Fin
Piracy is funny until it happens to you
You know, look. I used to think web piracy was a joke and supported The Pirate Bay and agreed with Cory Doctorow. I would look at an album that I’ve purchased on Vinyl and then purchased again on iTunes but had reached my sharing limit because I have it on my work and several home computers and wouldn’t think twice about finding a pirated copy of it online to copy over to my netbook for a trip. I know it’s illegal but I didn’t care because it was far removed from me, I never saw the effects of this kind of activity first hand. But those days are in the past.
Loyal readers might recall that Morgen and I just published a free ebook. Actually my publishing company used lulu.com to publish the free ebook, but you get the idea. (It’s available as a free download from this link but in case you want another opinion before downloading it for free here’s a review of it. That I wrote.) This free ebook has been available for a few days and we’ve been basking in the glory of post-self publishing bliss enjoying reading and rereading the sevens of positive posts to twitter about the book. The review itself even received positive reviews from the critics.
This was all well and good until I saw this:
Can you fucking believe that? I never thought this could happen to me, but there you go.
Look, I mean, I guess I should be flattered that someone thought so much of my free ebook to pass it on to their friends, but I’m not some running some charity organization over here. Do you know how much I make off it when someone emails my free ebook to someone else? NOT A GOD DAMN CENT that’s how much. Sorry for that out burst but do you know how much it costs me to live what with rent and food and a pregnant wife? Well let me tell you it’s a lot more than nothing that’s for sure. Do you see the problem here?
And poor Morgen, that guy barely understands how email works in the first place to trying to explain to him how he’s getting 50% of nothing since some dick thought it would be a barrel of laughs to email our free ebook to everyone in his address book is no party.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that my eyes have been opened to a whole other side of this argument and some things I’ve said in the past might have worked against me. But I’m trying to correct that now, and I’d like to ask that please, if you’d like to read a copy of ‘Hi Hollywood’ you just do the stand up thing and download it for free yourself rather than sneaking around and stabbing me in the back.
Thanks.
New Vegan Shoes
Being Vegan means always being on the look out for awesome shoes that aren’t made from animals. Leather is a core component for a lot of shoes so keeping an eye out for alternatives is key. Sure there are al vegan shoe companies like Macbeth which make great stuff, but I’m picky and have more particular tastes or something. Friends of mine know that the last year has been rough. My old shoes have been falling apart and Adidas wasn’t making them anymore, and the new stuff coming out was all leather which sucked. Luckily, very recently, a few new designs have popped up that are awesome. Rather than having to find the links each time, I thought I’d just post here so I could point to this in the future.
These all canvas Puma Benny‘s caught my eye in a shop in LA but they only had size 8, and actually told me that was the only size Puma made. I couldn’t believe it and went right to Zappos to check, 2 days later I had size 11 in hand.
I was so psyched on the Puma’s that I tweeted about them and Glen tipped me off to these new all synthetic Adidas Campus II that had just come out. He picked some up in NYC and knew for sure they were synthetic which is good because the online description says leather so I never would have ordered them, but I did and sure enough they are all man made materials. I was a little worried about the gold, but it’s actually pretty subtle and I kinda dig it.
Both those were rad for sure, but the holy grail for me is the canvas Superstars I had previously but have long since since sold out. So when I heard about this new Pro Shell I had to check it out right away. And at $30 from Amazon it was worth the gamble. I got these today and they feel a LOT like superstars, but with a slightly higher ankle. I’m on the fence about that velcro strip on the top and if it gets in the way I’m just going to cut it off. Otherwise, these are really comfortable and they look all kinds of classic.
Of course buying 3 pair of shoes in one week might seem excessive, but I’m throwing out everything else I have and if you know how long I’ve been wearing the old ass shit I have right now looking for new things, having 3 pair on hand actually makes a lot of sense. Don’t beleive me? This is what I’ve been wearing for the last 2 years:
I had no idea those were limited edition when I bought them and if I’d known I would have bought an extra pair. I don’t know why Adidas doesn’t make these full time, I got so many compliments on them when I had them. Well, before they started looking like hell anyway. They did just release a new model that is similar, but they replaced the rubber toe cap with a never before used leather one which is fucking dumb and defeats the whole point of having the rest of the shoe be man made. Oh well.
Going down in flames, or being OK with endings
This is a concept I’ve wanted to write for a while now, but have kept putting off and forgetting about. I was reminded of it the other day while having lunch next to a table with two girls talking about their recent breakups. Yes I was eavesdropping. Heavily.
One girl had obviously just gotten divorced and was telling her friend about some resulting confusion, and her friend had also just broken up with a long term boyfriend and was in the same kind of situation. Their conundrum was that in every relationship they’d been in, one party had done something wrong, enough to kill the relationship and cause those involved to never want to see each other again. Painful, but fairly straight forward. However in both of these girls recent relationships nothing had caused a major fracture. Rather, they had just grown slowly apart and both had realized it and decided, like rational adults, that rather than stay together in a relationship neither one of them was happy with that they should end it, and give each other the opportunity to be happy elsewhere.
The resulting confusion was they didn’t know how to treat the other person when they ran into them in the future. Painful break up exes were easy, they’d mutually snub each other and go about their business but given that they had no lingering hard feelings for these recent exes, and likewise the exes didn’t hold any ill will towards them, what the hell were they supposed to do? But this isn’t only a relationship conundrum, and I know plenty of people (myself included) who have the same kind of questions and confusion come up in regards to business in one way or another. I think at it’s core, the bits and pieces of whatever the previous situation were don’t really matter anymore, it’s all about being OK with something coming to an end.
Hi Hollywood
I just published my second book. Woot!
This book is about the magic of movies. About reaching to a higher standard. About daring to dream. About making movies awesome again. We dare you to read any one of the potential oscar winners presented here in rough treatment format and say that they wouldn’t be awesome movies. We fucking dare you.
Morgen and I wrote this book a while ago and have been sitting on it waiting for the exact right moment to spring it on the world, and that moment is now! Brought to you in a handy downloadable ebook, this is also kind of the launch of my new publishing house Surprise Attack Publishing. It’s free and it’s awesome, or at least I think it is. If you have any taste in literature you’ll probably agree.
