Jakedog.org

26February2010

you know you’re semi-good lookin…

Posted by Dirk under: been drinking; Friday Video.

Friday video is back, bitches!

If I could learn to play this on guitar, I could die happy.

26February2010

Deadwood

Posted by Dirk under: been drinking.

Man, some days, I really miss Deadwood.  Fuck HBO for cancelling that show.

26February2010

Here, put this bandit hat on….

Posted by Dirk under: been drinking.

My favorite move of 2009 was The Fantastic Mr Fox.    I’ve liked some of Wes Anderson’s previous movies, but this one I really dig.  Which is odd, because I generally don’t care for animated movies that much, but this one really digs my groove.

I dunno how much of my love for this movie is due to George Clooney.  I do dig him.   The other movie from 2009 that I really liked also had Clooney in it,  (Up In The Air).

13February2010

Will Shetterly – Midnight Girl

Posted by Dirk under: books; Kindle.

First book length reading on my new Kindle  (also, I bought a Kindle recently 🙂 ).  I think this is supposed to be Young Adult novel but I thought it worked just fine for a 44 year old dude.  Basically the story of a young girl who finds out on her 14th birthday that she is a wee bit different than all the other kids out there.   I won’t tell you how, exactly, she is different, cause that would be a spoiler.

Pretty much everything in the book has been done before, especially with the current popularity of ‘urban fantasy’ and ‘contemporary fantasy’, but Shetterly ties it all up in a fun and easy to read package.  The characters are appealing and well drawn and the story pulls you right along.

Not sure how long it is cause the Kindle doesn’t do page numbers, but the paperback version says it’s 168 pages.  I read it in an afternoon.  Looks like Mr. Shetterly is self publishing it, even though he is a fairly established author and has been writing for a couple decades now.  Support an indy author and give it a shot!  The Kindle version is a bargain at $3.95.

1February2010

Elmore Leonard – Cuba Libre

Posted by Dirk under: books.

Elmore Leonard is one of those authors that I almost can’t go wrong with.   I haven’t read more than half a dozen of his books but they’ve all been pretty good.  This one is too.  Basically a western transplanted to Cuba.  The main character is a cowpoke who just got out of jail for robbing banks (he was just trying to get the money he was owed though) who gets involved with a scheme to ship horses from America to Cuba and sell them for a handsome profit.

Things go awry though when he falls for a gal and then ends up in prison and war breaks out.   And $40,000 on a train too.

I liked it.

1February2010

T. Jefferson Parker – L.A. Outlaws

Posted by Dirk under: books.

A schoolteacher with a secret life as “Allison Murrieta”, modern day outlaw.  She robs from everybody, keeps some of it and gives some away to charities.  But she gets involved with some bad dudes when she steals some diamonds and ends up with a very badass ex-gang member after her.

She hooks up with a young deputy just back from serving in Iraq and they try to get through it all alive.

Pretty fun book.  I’ll keep an eye out by more from the same author.

1February2010

Shut your hole.

Posted by Dirk under: rant.

If you get a big tax refund check because you’ve got kids, don’t go around gloating about all the money you are getting back because there are plenty of people like me that have chosen not to have any kids but yet we still get to pay for your kid’s education and shit like that.   And let me make this clear, I don’t mind paying for other people’s kid’s education.  Not at all.  I think it is very important.  What pisses me off is when I am paying for it and the people who had the damn kids are not paying for it.  That really frosts my goat.

I know kids are expensive to raise.   That’s why some of us don’t have any.  I know they are all cute and shit and you got that maternal instinct telling you to drop a couple of screaming meatsacks into the world but you are a human being.  You have a brain.  Use it to evaluate your life and figure out if you can afford to pay for those kids.   If you can’t (and many of you can’t) then don’t have em ffs.

23January2010

mega book catch up post

Posted by Dirk under: books.

Joseph A. West – The Silver Arrowhead A mystery Western, of sorts, with a Chinese-American detective and his helpful sidekick.  It wasn’t bad but something about it just didn’t click with me for some reason.

Larry Doyle – I Love You, Beth Cooper A comedy by a former writer for The Simpsons.   I only read it because the girlfriend read it and thought it was hilarious.  I didn’t think it was as funny as she did, but it’s not bad.   Better than the movie.

Charles Willeford – New Hope For The Dead Another Hokey Moseley book by Willeford.  A fun mystery with a neat character.

Chris Moriarty – Spin State Mystery/military science fiction about an elite female soldier that goes to a mining colony to find out who killed a famous scientist.  Was pretty good. I think this is the author’s first book and I’ll keep an eye for his next one.

Richard Stark – The Outfit A Parker novel from Stark.  That’s really enough said for me.   Parker gets pissed at ‘The Outfit’ and goes about making em regret they ever heard his name.

Richard Stark – The Mourner And another Parker novel.  This time he’s sort of hired to steal an old statue, but of course things aren’t nearly as easy as they sound.

Darwyn Cooke – Richard Stark’s Parker Book:  One The Hunter This is a graphic novel based on the first Parker novel, the same one that has been made into a movie twice.  I liked it.

Jeff Lindsay – Dexter in the Dark I’ve been digging the Dexter tv show so I thought I’d check out the books.  Not bad, but the characters are quite a bit different than they are on the tv show, and I like em the way they are on the tv show.   In other words, I think I prefer the tv version to the books at this point.

Jeff Lindsay – Darkly Dreaming Dexter I think this is actually the first in the series.    Same as above.

Jeff Lindsay – Dearly Devoted Dexter Another one in the series.

Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim Dude is involved with a magical group that ends up betraying him and sending him to Hell.  While there he becomes an absolute badass, basically by fighting in Hell’s version of gladiator games.  Then he escapes, along with a few items he picked up along the way and goes looking for revenge.  I liked it.

Eleanor Davis – The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook A graphic novel for younger readers.  I got it to give to my niece eventually.  It’s got cool art and is about a nerdy kid who finds out two less nerdy kids are also really into science and they for The Secret Science Alliance and hang out in their secret workshop inventing stuff.   I look forward to handing it over to the niece when she gets down to reading.

Jason Little – Shutterbug Follies Another graphic novel, but for an older audience.  About a gal that works in a photo developing place who gets involved in a mystery when she develops some pictures of dead people.  I liked it.  You can check out some of Little’s work here.

Paul Pope – 100% And another graphic novel from one of my favorite comic book artist guys around.   This one is a strange tale of the future that I’m not even going to try to describe.   I really dig Pope’s art.   Check him out here.

Joe Haldeman – The Accidental Time Machine Time travel story about a grad student that accidentally invents a time machine.  It only goes forward in time though.  And he doesn’t have much control over it.   I liked it.

Jeff Somers – The Electric Church Set a bit into a future that really sucks.  The rich have really cool lives and the poor have really shitty ones.  The main character is one of the poor people.  He makes his living as a Gunner, an assassin.   Gritty action, I liked it.

Jeff Somers- The Digital Plague Sequel to the above book.  I didn’t think it was quite as good as the first one, but it didn’t suck.

Rick Riordan – Big Red Tequila Private eye book, first in a series.  Set in Texas, the main character is a master of some martial art and he has a cool cat.  In this book he investigates his father’s death.  Fun read, I’ll pick up the rest of the series over time, I’m sure.

Steve Perry – Matadora A sequel to The Man Who Never Missed.  This book is about the training compound set up to train Matadors (super body guards) and one woman that goes through the training.  I liked it and have a couple more books in the series waiting to be read.

Ed Gorman – Lawless Western about a dude trying to get his life together, but of course things don’t go as well as he might have hoped.  Something about this book just didn’t appeal to me, though I did finish it.

C.J. Cherryh – The Paladin Though it’s never stated as such, the setting of this book is very much like Medieval Japan.   The story is about a young girl who goes to a legendary Lord that lives in exile on a mountaintop and begs him to train her so she can avenge her family.    Pretty good book.

Charlie Huston – Caught Stealing Bad dudes want something from the main character and he has no idea what.   And then some other bad dudes want that something too.  And then they all start doing bad things to the main character.   Fairly gritty crime novel.  I liked it.

Charlie Huston – Six Bad Things Same character as the above book.   He’s managed to get out of the bad situation he was in and is living comfortably in Mexico, but then a Russian tourist stops by and starts asking questions.  Oops.  Shit hits the fan again.

Charlie Huston – A Dangerous Man Same character again.  He’s doing what he has to to get by but soon he finds out he can’t anymore.

Charlie Huston – Already Dead A new series.  The main character in this one is sort of a detective guy, but not exactly.  Plus he’s a vampire.  I read this entire series too (see below) and liked it well enough, my only problem was that some of the various groups of vampires seem a bit too stereotyped to me.

Charlie Huston – No Dominion Joe Pitt, the vampire from the above book, continues to cause trouble and get beat up, while also kicking ass himself.

Charlie Huston – Half the Blood of Brooklyn More Joe Pitt.

Charlie Huston – Every Last Drop And Joe Pitt again.  You just can’t keep him down for long.

Charlie Huston – My Dead Body The final Joe Pitt book.  He gets to ride off into the sunset.  Sort of.

Jeff Carlson – Plague Zone Third book in this series about the world after a nanomachine plague has wiped out most of the life on earth.  I liked the first one and the second was ok, but I just didn’t get into this one too much.  Ended up skimming it a lot.   The cool thing is, I won a contest and the author named a character in the book after me.  Sweet.

Richard Sala – The Chuckling Whatsit Strange graphic novel about a serial killer, bizarre geegaws and a bunch of weirdos trying to figure out what is going on.   I liked it.

Warren Ellis, Raulo Caceres – Crecy Graphic novel about the battle of Crecy in The Hundred Years War.  I liked it.

1December2009

Fuck AT&T (and just about every other large corporation)

Posted by Dirk under: musings.

We recently switched from the used-to-be-local ISP that we had been using for nearly 10 years to AT&T for our internet.  When we signed up, they told us we needed a new modem.  I thought this was odd, because our old ISP was basically just reselling AT&T service to us, after adding a cut for themselves, so why wouldn’t that modem continue working with AT&T?  But they said that even though the new modem would cost 100 bucks, they would give us a $100 credit so it would be free.  Ok, whatever then.

The other day we get our first bill.   The extra $100 charge is on the bill, the $100 credit is no where to be seen.

Doro calls AT&T.  The lady she talks to tells us we should have gotten a postcard in the mail that would have had a webaddress that we could have went to and filled out an online form in order to get our $100 credit.

I shit you not.  That is what she said.  What kind of fucked up, round about, stick it to the customer bullshit is that?

Doro perservered though and the lady said  she could do it for her on the phone.  After 20 minutes on hold we find out that soon we will get an automatic phone call telling us that our Visa gift card has been shipped.

A Visa gift card.  Not $100 off our bill, like the guy said when we signed up, but rather a Visa gift card.  Whenever that arrives.  If it’s not stolen in the mail.

And what really annoys me is there basically is no viable alternative.  This sort of fuck-the-customer mentality is how pretty much all corporations do business these days.  We could pay a hefty ‘early cancellation fee’ and quit AT&T, but I doubt Comcast would treat us any better.

15November2009

Brother Ali – Uncle Sam Goddamn

Posted by Dirk under: Friday Video.

I know, it’s Saturday, not Friday.  Too bad.