A cool thing just happened.  I work at a library, and cool things happen at libraries all the time, so I shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not, but I am pleased.  People often donate books and other media items–cds, dvds, magazines, videotapes, and even games to the library.  Somebody donated Trivial Pursuit DVD Saturday Night [...]

I saw the sneak preview of Surrogates last night.  It was fun.  A bit of a small crowd.  Certainly the movie was more enjoyable than GAMER although it had a similar theme.  Gamer was about people being run as robots–Surrogates was about Robots being run as people. I’m not going to review the plot.  There [...]

Four of us went off to see a movie Sunday afternoon–the action thriller, GAMER.  It was a bit of an adventure.  I started by getting lost in Tempe, Arizona, a place I thought I knew.  Turned out that the movie wasn’t at the theater I thought it would be at–that place has been shut down.  [...]

I am not a camera person.  I should take pictures to spice up this blog.  I have a digital camera.  I could do it.  The blog would be better with a few pictures in it.  I know all that.  I’m still not going to do it. Does that say something about me?  Yes, probably several [...]

The alarm came on this morning and startled me so much that I fell out of my car, and also fell out of that reality.  That was a good thing, actually, as that dream was getting weirder and weirder. Let’s talk about dreams as a form of entertainment.  Real dreams, at least my dreams, aren’t [...]

and I say that not just because I’d like to unload 50 years, but also because the entertainment world seems to be optimized for young teens right now.  There is such a wealth of great entertainment aimed at them that I’m blue with envy.  More about that later. I always love it when I finish [...]

I have a tendency to start these blogs by cheering for someone–someone whose innate generosity or desperate business decisions causes good things to happen to me.  Today’s cheer is for Tor Books, who have retained me on their review list even though I’m not on the Nebula committee any longer, and haven’t been for a [...]

Hooray for the half-price table at Samurai Comics! Labor Day afternoon my son and I escaped the house and drove off to the comic book stores of Central Phoenix.  There are two, and they are both excellent–everything that a comic book store should be in this day and age.  I expected a big Labor Day [...]

Saturday in Phoenix, Arizona.  The sky is covered with low gray clouds.  Thunder rumbles overhead.  Suddenly, there is a flash of lightning so bright that it seems to go right through the library, searing my retinas and leaving a streak across my vision and a dull ache, like someone passed a wire through my eyes [...]

Today’s entertainment will consist of:        1. getting a headache from paint fumes        2.  struggling with a whole set of new computers being installed.         3.  coping with bugs in Runescape’s new upgraded game engine.         4.  making peace between angry wife and surly son.          5.  a long day at work. Taking these things by the [...]