I write for dealnews.com. Some mornings, I am asked to put together a list of the five best deals from over-night. We call this the Morning Jolt. I wrote this morning’s (1/8/13).
Beyond just self-promotion, I wanted to share that there was one deal that I wrote up that went out of stock before the Jolt was posted. I liked the write-up, so I will include it, here:
Top Garden DealFairy Garden Starter Kit together with a $10 Target Gift Card
Vendor: Target
Price: $20 with free shipping
Lowest By: $26
Do You Need It?: Even if you don’t live in Cottingley, chances are your garden has just as many fairies living in it (meaning: none). But it’s still fun to pretend. This kit includes a miniature fence, fairy, garden arch, bench, sign, birdbath, and watering can that you can set up either in a pot indoors or in your yard and make it look like the fairy folk come a-visiting. “Why, no, Mr. TinkleWings, I would NOT mind if you made me a pair of shoes!”
Was this worth sharing? Probably not! But I want to blog more. New Year’s Resolution’d! (And not just about the X-Men. SHAMELESS PLUG!)
Where have I been?
Working on designing a casual table-top card game, that’s where! You can check out some info about it, as well as a bunch of photos, over on Google+. (Sort them by “Most Recent” or else they might make less sense they already do.)
It’s called “By Trick Or By Treat”.
.
Since getting my new phone, I’ve noticed that several words have been added to my autocorrect dictionary. Some are misspellings that I inadvertantly “accept”ed, others are because I have an X-Men Recap Blog. Some of them, I have no idea why they’re in there. Anyway, here’s the list (minus a few stupid “real word, just capitalized”). You might enjoy it:
amex
Annadale [my hometown!]
aoa [I have no idea what this means]
arkham
avi [the file type, obv.]
BAFTAs
bien [oi! en francais!]
BLT
buble
Cerebro
Chia
cosplay
Costas [Bob? Again, no idea why I would have typed this]
cyberno [the one I am most proud of]
ded [as in D.E.D., DEAD!]
doofus
Downton [No, I do NOT mean “DownTOWN Abbey” GOD!]
DVRd [to use a set-top recording device to record The Bachelorette]
eBayed
Fwew [my trademarked sigh of relief sound]
gollum
gots [as in: I gots to get PAID]
Hahaha
HAR
Havok [Cry Havok, and release the X-Men of WAR!]
huffpo [I hate myself for using that]
im [IM, probably]
ims [either the pulral of above OR a bad contraction of “I ams”]
ios
iOS
ish [a 2-for meaning “issue” and “-like” eg: comic ish]
larious [abbreviation of “hilarious”]
legos
lte [had to be added, even though I have a 4G LTE phone. Verizon Fail.]
marsden [yeah. What?!]
Mesmero
Moop
muties [slang epithet for mutants in the Marvel Universe (did I mention I have an X-Men Blog?)]
Namor [Lord of Atlantis, ‘natch!]
Natch
natch
Neeeeerd [like a nerd, but moreso]
oa [No idea. A Who’s The Boss reference?]
Okee [normally followed by “dokie”, but THAT didn’t get added. Weird.]
Pchow [???]
PCP [angel dust? I do not remember writing that - possibly the result of PCP?]
PINTERESTING [I can NOT believe I wrote that, even if it was as a joke.]
prophecise [thanks, fat fingers, for making me add a spelling error to my CORRECT dictionary!]
RAZR [As I use a RAZR phone, this is another huge failing on the phone’s part…]
Reow [like a cat]
sammich [my trademarked spelling of sandwich]
sayin [again, another attempt at slanguage in texting]
Smaug
Sned [I’s LIKE to image this is an epic mis-type of “ends”]
sommerjam [hello!]
speeking [did I ever tell you I’m a TERRIBLE speller?]
spidey [thwip]
Stemlesss [refering to wine glasses … for snakes?]
suuure [sarcastic form of “sure”]
Tetchy
Touche
trask [inventor of the Sentinels]
unionize
Unus
villian [having this added was a real pain - not knowing the correct spelling, my phone would now auto-correct to the wrong spelling.]
Voltron
x-men
wematt [mistype of “xematt” - founder of X-Entertainment and Dinosaur Dracula]
xmen
Ziti [I’m Italian?]
zune
So, over on another blog, I’m writing about my experience of reading ALL 50 YEARS of the X-Men. Just a small project I’m working on….
Me: “My heel hurts when I walk without shoes on.”
Dr: “Do you have hard wood floors?”
Me: “Yes.”
Dr: “It sounds like you have plantar fasciitis.”
Me: “Yeah … that’s what my wife said.”
Dr: “Oh? What does your wife do?”
Me: “She has plantar fasciitis!”
Then we laughed.
(Well, at least I did….)
This morning, I realized something:
Verizon has decreed that “All new phones on our network shall be 4G!” which had made people speculate that the next iPhone is CERTAINLY going to be 4G this time. Right?
Well …
We know that Apple put a 4G antenna into the iPad 3 (The new iPad, 3rd-generation iPad, whatever) but that device has the luxury of being large enough to squeeze in a lot of batteries to keep up with the power demands of 4G.
And we know that Apple hates - HATES - going backwards, so they will not release a next-gen iPhone with worse specs than the one before. (Could you imagine? On stage at the keynote? “And the iPhone 5’s battery life…er.. it’s *coughcoughcough* MOVING ON!” Would not fly.) No. They would want the iPhone 5 to have as good, if not better battery life than the 4S.
So, what are they to do if they can’t figure out how to get a 4G antenna AND keep the same long-lasting battery life that they have in the current phone?
They could: 1) NOT release the iPhone 5 “on schedule” in their regular yearly cycle, either pushing it back or skipping a year all together or 2) Release an iPhone 5 for AT&T only, and let Verizon customers suffer a bit.
In either case, people would go nuts. Neither is a good solution for Apple.
How much do you want to bet that their engineering team are having sleepless nights over this very problem?
From my latest Rumor Roundup, over on dealnews:
Maggie Smith leaving “Downton Abbey”?
If she doesn’t re-sign her contract, the writers will be forced to get rid of her character, Dowager Countess of Grantham. My vote: The Countess, while piloting a hovercraft, crashes into the TARDIS; there are no survivors. (I’ve never seen the show.)
Read it all here.
I’m taking a week off in April (use it or lose it, you know!) BUT, I’m not going anywhere. SO, I’m going to try to use that week to write a short novel / book.
Over on Facebook, I’ve put up an informal poll so you can influence the course of my future events. (At least for a week.)
Holy CRAP! A new “To Be Determined…” podcast? I thought those guys DIED?!

I just read “Time Gentlemen” by Craig P. Kelly.
But more on that later! First, a story about ME! (Don’t like it? Well, then, you shouldn’t have told me, all through my childhood, that I was special and that people would one day care what I had to say … MOM!)
To begin, I’ve told Twitter to send me an email every time I receive a new follower. (What does THAT say about me?!) We’ll leave that, for the time being … but it’s important to know, otherwise the rest doesn’t make sense.
The other day, I saw that a chap named @CraigPKelly started following me. Part of why I have Twitter send me the emails is so that I can read my new followers’ bio. This gentleman’s read, “Craig P. Kelly is a 30-something bald chap who needs to get out more. He is the author of Time Gentlemen, a time-travel comedy featuring Jack & Joe.” (the emphasis is all mine, for effect.)
“I LIKE BOOKS!” I shouted in my brian and immediately downloaded the sample for this novel. And that, friends, is how I came upon this book. So, authors, let this be a lesson to you: Follow me on Twitter and I might just read your book! (There might be a bigger lesson in here about self-promotion and “getting your name out there”, too, but - again - this is ALL ABOUT ME!)
Ok. Now that you’ve read “Issue 0” of this story, here’s a bit of a review I wrote. It’s cut-and-pasted from my 5-star* (FIVE STAR!!!) Amazon review, so if you already read it there, well, you can skip this chunk of blockquote-tagged text:
“Time Gentlemen” by Craig P. Kelly:
Often very delightful and frequently outright hilarious (I laughed out loud several times, and that sort of thing just doesn’t happen to me) it’s full of wonderful turns-of-phrases and word-plays. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the passage about the one brother catching a clock pendulum “like a gentleman”, for instance.
The best part? Unlike so many others who try writing humor only to turn out prose which is strained and awkward, Mr. Kelly’s writing feels effortless and smoothly funny. (Sure, I MAY have rolled my eyes at one or two jokes, but I still enjoyed those laughs too, despite myself.)
Is “Time Gentlemen” without flaws? No. But it’s a great first novel and I can’t wait to see what else Mr. Kelly has for us. So, go on! Read it! It’s fun.
*Those that know me (yeah, how well do you REALLY know me?! Like, would you be safe if I pushed the “button” on the eponymous box in the movie “The Box”?!) will know that I only give 5-star reviews to a very limited selection of books, after they have withstood an arbitrary “test of time” period that I make up in my own mind. And now I’m giving “Time Gentlemen” and instant 5-stars?!
Well, to be honest (and I’m sorry Mr. Kelly, if you’re reading this) “Time Gentlemen” is not really a 5-star book … but it IS HIGH FOUR, for sure. I gave the Amazon review five full stars because I want people to read this book. A lot. (AND I want a lot of people to read the book.)
I want Mr. Kelly to see five stars and be inspired to write a second book for me to enjoy. (emphasis mine)
So to those people who are confused over my 5-star rating I say, “shut up!” It’s MY arbitrary system that I can choose to warp however I want to whatever devious ends.
Also: Are you still reading this blog post? “Time Gentlemen” is way funnier. And it’s only $2.99 for eff’s sake, so what have you got to lose? (Well, if you hate it, one could argue that you’d lose $2.99 and the respect for me as a book reviewer, so we both lose. I’ll take that chance.)