Lit City Blues

My second entry for Wrath is a lot more fun that the first one, inspired by my hatred for fax machines:
“Why isn’t the damn thing working?”“Did you press 9 before you put in the number?”“Yes, of course I did!”There was a screeching noise and then the fax machine began emitting one, long continuous beep. The Dispatch Center wasn’t that small, but it was small enough that the noise caused heads to turn and cries of recrimination to rain down on the hapless Dispatchers attempting to fax a request for a phone ping to Sprint.Eventually, one of them had to crawl under the counter and the first Dispatcher, Martin was his name, began to sneeze uncontrollably.“When was the last time someone dusted under here?”“Probably never,” replied his counterpart, Aleecia. “Just think, there’s probably enough dead skin cells under there to clone enough dispatchers to get us back to full staffing.”“Oh wonderful,” Martin said. “Thanks for that image. Just what I need, thinking of how many Dispatcher skin cell…

So, it's been awhile since I did an edition of Boozehound, so I figured I might as well share some of the things I've been up to in the old home bar. And let's just say the blender has been getting something of a workout:


I know 'traditional' bartending doesn't really focus on 'frozen' drinks- but the Missus is a huge fan of pina coladas and we scored an entire case of bananas from a school lunch pick up- so we had a couple of weeks where frozen banana daiquris (top photo) suddenly became my drink of choice. The recipe I found over on the Spruce Eats included both Triple Sec and lime juice, which struck me as kind of unusual as the classic daiquiri consists of simple syrup, lime juice and rum- so I'm not sure what Triple Sec brings to the party- but it made for a tasty drink, so I didn't care all that much. If there was a downside to the Banana Daiquiri is was probably that the banana flavor got buried a little bit- which makes me wonder if swapp…

The House passed another gigantic coronavirus relief package that's probably dead in the Senate- whether they launch another go-round of aid, I don't know, but the thought did occur to me that even if the price-tag of some of these initiatives make you grimace, this a moment where ambition, if carefully thought through, could well be called for. 
First, policy makers and wonks will be arguing about the efficacy of the choice for decades, but like it or not, we don't have one national response to this. In some ways that's been a hinderance to our actions, but in other ways it's been helpful. After all, New York City is not Iowa- and it's not Montana either. States should have the flexibility to respond to this based on the level of outbreak they're each facing. Granted, I know this notion has launched a million, "it's like letting people pee in the pool" metaphors that are becoming increasingly annoying, but it is what it is. I think the only th…

Watched On: Disney + Released: 2019 Directed By: J.J. Abrams Starring: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong'o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams Rotten Tomatoes: 52% Tomatometer, 86% Audience Score Pick: Mine
So, with the end of any trilogy, you've got to approach a review kind of on two levels: one, is it a good movie in and of itself and two, does it complete the trilogy in a satisfactory way. I'm not entirely sure that The Rise of Skywalker rises to meet even the most basic qualifications of those two points and I've been puzzling over it and trying to figure out why.
Picking up after The Last Jedi, it turns out Palpatine (last seen falling into the Death Star at the end of The Return of The Jedi) is alive and well and threatening the free worlds of the galaxy with something called The Final Order. This t…

So I came across a random Reddit post the other day that kind of shook me a little bit. Apparently noted fantasy author David Eddings and his wife spent a year in jail back in the 70s for child abuse when they lived in South Dakota. His story was that they relocated to Denver and he took a job in a grocery store because he "didn't get a raise" at the small college he was at. Yeah, nope. Not so much. A year in jail and losing custody of the kids you adopted seems to have been the primary motivating factor for the relocation there, Dave. (It does get a mention on his wikipedia page- so it's not like people are actively trying to memory hole this- but still.)
And man, it bummed me out. It still bums me out because growing up, once I had devoured Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, Eddings was my jam, man. I've read (and still own) the Belgariad and the Mallorean-- and the two prequels. I didn't love The Tamuli or the Elenium quite so much (his work is very deriviti…

This was the first piece of writing that honestly made me pause and think about a Trigger Warning. In retrospect, I should have just put it in there, but I also wanted to let the piece land where it landed-- but I also don't know where this came from. (As in, I know I've got some modest game at this whole writing thing, but I felt like I dug deep for this one and didn't know I could pull something so raw off credibly.) I know what it's for, of course. (A character moment in Book 4-- I think. Book 4 is in the very early stages of development and mostly in my head at this point. So we'll see if this survives to paper.) But anyway, here's Wrath:
It was a warm summer night shortly after he turned thirteen when something inside him snapped and he let loose the wrath that had been building inside of him for years. The back door to the house crashed open and Dad staggered in, drunk as usual. Mom had become a master of hiding her emotions and reactions to Dad, but now h…