Book 1: “The Devil’s Toothache” and “Dentures”

Book 2: “Higher”, “A Little Snack”, and the Novella “Roadside Memorial”

As always, free previews of all 5 stories, as well as several free short stories (all under 4,000 words) are available at Feedbooks, and Smashwords for your enjoyment.

Technorati Tags: Books, Horror, Short Stories

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Have you ever woken up on a Sunday morning to frantic sound of knocking on your door?  Sure you have.  We all have.  But most of the time its a Jehovah’s Witness or another religious zealot sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong, or some kids trying to sell candy bars to pay for new wrestling unitards or cheerleading outfits.

But have you ever opened the front door early on a Sunday morning and find two men standing in biohazard suits waiting for you?  Bet you haven’t.  But I have.

It was several weeks after 9/11, and I was living in an apartment complex in Edison, New Jersey, and everyone was paranoid.  And when someone smelled something strange…

Anyway, we were given just enough time clothing and then ushered out of the house.  No time to put in contact lenses or even take a piss.  Thankfully I knew where my glasses were.  I felt like I was an extra in the sequel to the movie Outbreak, and as my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I were forced out along with every other bleary-eyed resident, I couldn’t help but scan the roof for a loose monkey.  I saw none, and was slightly disappointed.  But I did see plenty of police cars, fire engines, and guys in funny outfits

We were told we wouldn’t be allowed back into the apartment until the mystery subtance that was discovered was fully examined, and they didn’t know how long that would be.  It was cold, so we left for her parents’ house, stopping along the way at a CVS to use the restroom.

We returned ten hours later as dusk set in and found everything quiet.  We talked to a couple of neighbors and learned the truth of the mystery liquid that was found in the entranceway to the apartment building:

Curry,

Someone had spilled curry.  And someone else freaked out and called the police.

Now, you have to understand, Edison, NJ has a very large Indian population, and the smell of curry is very prominent.  Pervasive, even.  When we moved into the apartment, the handles to all of the kitchen cabinets were covered with a thin layer of curry powder, and if I could have stripped the wallpaper, I would have, because the smell had just sunk in. 

To live in Edison is to be intimate with the smell of curry.

Obviously someone was new in town, and instead of maybe asking someone what the strange smell was, he panicked and called the police.

As if someone would waste their time on a chemical attack against a small apartment building in Northern New Jersey.

Dumbass.

See… not a great story, but better than the crap that most people spew on Jeopardy.

I still can’t smell curry without seeing a biohazard suit in my mind’s eye.  Indian food has been ruined for me forever.

Technorati Tags: biohazard, curry, edison, Jeopardy, NJ

5.  Pest of the West-  This episode is just awful all around, and there is a reason why Atlantis Squarepantis and Dunces and Dragons and Where’s Gary are shown all the time while Pest of the West stays locked in the vault.  The story is awful and the dialogue is offensive.  I haven’t seen it in a while, but I remember being really turned off by the constant use of the word “stupid” and how SB constantly offended Patrick.  The lessons on how to treat friends in this episode are horrible, and thankly, second chances at viewing it are few and far between.  EVERYONE should avoid this episode, not just the 6-12 year old crowd

4.  Bubble Buddy-  This episode features Spongebob as a killer.  He buries some poor guy up to his neck in the sand during high tide, and at the end of the episode, we see the dead fish’s angel going up to Heaven.  I mean, this is just wrong

3.  Frankendoodle-  Just like cartoons and shows that show monsters lurking in the closet and under the bed, striking fear into the heart of young children, this episode is just plain scary.  And kids these days already don’t want to do  anything creative or artistic.  All they want to do is veg and play video games and watch TV.  So this episode, which features an innocent drawing turned into a blood thirsty monster look to erase Spongebob,  may be too much for children to handle.  The last thing we need is children afraid to even pick up a pencil

2.  #1 Fan- Mr Krabs digging up a corpse just to get a hat back.  Not only do we have grave robbing in this episode, we have zombie fish erupting from the ground and assaulting Mr Krabs.  As a child, there was nothing scarier that the walking dead.  After seeing the Thriller video, my insides knotted up every time we would pass a cemetery in the car, and I could just imagine the rotting corpses erupting from the dirt to hunt me down.  Now, this episode is not as bad as Thriller but still… grave robbing, zombie fish… not a good episode for children

1.  And finally, the most inappropriate SB episode for children… Nasty Patty.  Could there be any other?  I mean, Krabs and SB spend the entire episode trying to bury the health inspector, whom they think they killed.  Just awful.  Don’t get me wrong, its a good episode… if your fourteen or over.  But for the youngest viewers, it is nightmare inducing.

Let me know what you think below.  And don’t forget to check out my other Top 5 SB lists

Technorati Tags: Cartoons, Lists, Nick, reviews, SB, Sponge Bob, Spongebob, Squarepants

Star Wars: Legacy of the Force is a nine part series set several years after the last major trilogy, New Jedi Order.  It is written by three authors, each penning three of the novels.  The authors include, in no particular order, Aaron Allston, Karen Traviss and Troy Denning.  Denning is the most well known, having written many Forgotten Realms trilogies for TSR, now Wizards of the Coast.

This story line, to be blunt, shows the transformation of Jacen Solo from a mere foot soldier in the new Galactic Alliance, into a new Emperor.  This story can not be read in a vacuum; to fully understand the characters and their motives, you must be familiar with the events of both the New Jedi Order story as well as the Dark Nest trilogy.  Jacen’s actions and transformations are directly related to his experiences in these novels.

First off, it needs to be said, that this story was a little too long.  I think seven books would have been perfect (though, with three authors, each needed to be given an equal number of books, and six would have been too short, unless each was expanded 50 to 100 pages).  Anyway… I’m not going to judge whether the story was good or not.  This is not a stand alone story.  It exists within the framework of the expanded Star Wars Universe, and is an integral part of the mythology.  Its not a single, off-shoot story that can be easily judged based on its relevance and execution.  This story defines the characters and their futures, and as such, in my mind, simply exists.  now, their are elements to the story I liked, and others I loathed, but the series does follow the natural progression and evolution of the characters and the universe.

I’ll tell you one thing I really disliked and felt slowed the story to a crawl at some point: Boba Fett.  We all love the Fett from the movies.  But each of Karen Traviss’ novels dedicates half of the pages to Fett, his family, his home life, his home plant, and his status as the leader of the Mandalorean people.  It’s interesting, I guess, fleshing out the character from mere mercenary to an actual, dynamic character, but it was too much.  Now understand, Fett plays an integral role in the end game of the story, and his back story and the associated characters to play a major role, but i felt it was too much.  I felt that the same results could have been achieved through different means with a more satisfying experience.  Whether or not focusing on Fett was Traviss’ idea, or the idea of the braintrust behind the expanded universe, i don’t know.  But what I do know is that too much time was focused on Fett.  Don’t get me wrong, some people may like this.  or love this.  Because Fett is a beloved character in the Star Wars Universe.  But I felt that it lengthened the story too much, causing it bog down too much at times.

A second issue of mine was the villain in the books.  We have Alema Rar, a Twi’lik Jedi driven insane during the Dark Nest Trilogy, and Luminya, another Jedi from Luke’s past.  Both play integral roles in the story, but quite frankly, neither of them are that interesting or compelling  characters.  The only villain worth the ink is Jacen Skywalker.

What did I like?  We get to see the deaths of many major characters (I won’t ruin this for you), many Jedi battles, plot intrigues, and a lot of suspense.  We see the return of the Imperial Remnant and Admiral Daala.  And we get the slow, deliberate transformation of Jacen Solo into Darth Caedus.

The story of Jacen Solo is not original.  But what is these days?  We start with a man who wants to help the Alliance as it deals with the defection of Corellia and several other major planets.  We see a man who begins his quest with good intentions before being sucked into the Sith philosophy.  And like so many men in history and literature, the innocent desire to do good for the sake of all gets twisted into a philosophy of the means justifying the ends.  And over the course of the series, Jacen slowly grabs for power, doing horrible things in the same of the greater good.  He kills a terrorist during an interrogation.  He subverts Ben Skywalker.  He orders his parents killed.  He goes after Luke.  He kills a lot of innocent people.  He sacrifices his own fleet for nothing more than pride.  And, by the end, he is willing to do the same acts that Palpatine did, supposedly for the greater good. 

Watching Jacen’s fall from grace is a sobering peek into the minds of men who think they know better than everyone else what’s best for them.  At the beginning, you can sympathize with Jacen, with his actions, with his reasoning.  He is the most  tragic of figures, and the seeds of his rise and subsequent fall are evident early on.  The authors show us step-by-step how Jacen is drawn to the dark side and how he slowly becomes the monster he ends up being.  As a reader, its intriguing to look at the slippery slope Jacen finds himself on and wondering, on a personal level, how far we would go as individuals to achieve his goals.

This is a different type of series from New Jedi Order, in that NJO was several smaller, sometimes independent stories, woven together to form the larger tapestry of the Yuuzhan Vong War, and each individual trilogy or duology or stand alone book could be judged on how well it integrated with the larger story.  But this series is a single cohesive story and can’t be jugded by the same standards.  And again, that’s why I will not judge it on the merits of the meat of the story.  But in conclusion, I will say that I believe that same story could have been delivered in a shorter, more cohesive story where Fett, as well as other chaff, could have been minimized.  But in the end it was a good, thought sometimes very predictable and slow, expansion of the Star Wars Universe.  And like with any good story,  for every conflict that was solved another was created,  setting us up for the next intriguing chapter in the expanded Universe.

If you have any comments or more specific questions, feel free to comment.

Technorati Tags: Allston, Darth Caedus, Denning, Expanded Universe, Jacen Solo, Jedi, Legacy of the Force, Luke Skywalker, New Jedi Order, Sith, Star Wars, Traviss, Yuuzhan Vong

My wife and I adopted a wiener-pup over five years ago. We were told he was a tweenie, not quite a mini, up to 7 pounds, but not a massive standard dog, either. But the breeder was wrong. Our dog Friday is a beast.

To read the whole post and see some adorable pictures of Friday through th years, click over to the Lighter Side.

Technorati Tags: Children, Daschunds, dogs, wiener dogs

Why do the teeth end up like this?  Five reasons:

1. Obviously the Meth itself eats away the teeth.  This is the major cause of the break down
2. The craving for sweet food, which in turn eats away at the soft dentin inside
3. The lack of proper home care being high causes
4. decrease in salivary flow, which helps to neutralize acid and kill bacteria in the mouth
5. The lack of professional cleanings due to lack of caring about one’s appearance

Yes, I have seen it on several occasions.  It is a very obvious, affecting every tooth in the mouth.  The only other thing that even compares to this is baby bottle cavities found in children who drink a lot of milk during the day and are put to bed with a bottle.  Obviously that is NOT as serious in the long run because baby teeth fall out, but there are still issues.

Once Meth Mouth prgoresses this far, there is little to do but extract the teeth and make a denture.

So there you are.  Just like severely stained teeth can point to a tobacco habit (though tea, coffee and wine can also lead to stain), teeth that are dissolved to the gumline is a telltale sign of someone who smokes Meth.

Technorati Tags: crystal meth, drugs, Meth, methamphetamine, oral hygiene, teeth

Unfortunately, when I popped in Life Starts Here, I wasn’t afforded the same experience.

I Love Three Days Grace.  I bought the DVD the day it was released.  I have seen them in concert.  And they rock.

All Three Days Grace fans have waiting for the follow-up album to One-X for over 3 years, and unfortunately what we received didn’t meet my lofty expectations. 

There isn’t single bad song between their first two albums, each composed mostly of excellent, powerful songs with an occasional “only good” song sprinkled in.  I can listen to both the self-titled album and One-X from beginning to end and find myself singing along the entire time.  This album may be more evolved, but evolution is not always good.  I am reminded of Minutes to Midnight by Linkin Park where more than half the songs are god awful.  Now, I am not insinuating that any of these songs are horrible.  For the most part, they are passable, but in many cases they are saved only by the fact that Adam Gontier has such an amazing, dynamic voice, and sometimes I will drown out the music itself and simply enjoy Gontier’s vocals.

Are there any good songs?  The first single, Break, will grow on you, as will several others after several listen-throughs.  The best song on the album is by far Track 7 Last to Know.  But overall, there seems to be something missing, something that i just can’t put my finger on.  Unfortunately, there is no Just Like You or I Hate Everything or Home.  There is no Animal I Have Become or Pain or Riot.  There is no song you fall in love with immediately, and its upsetting.

Maybe I set my sights to high.  Maybe I am being unfair.  Maybe I haven’t listened to the album enough to appreciate all of the nuances.  And maybe I am right.  Three Days Grace followed up their first album so perfectly with One-X that I thought they could never falter

And I’ll be honest… I Don’t Care, the song Gontier provides vocals for for Apacolyptica’s “World’s Collide” was freaking awesome.  Just perfect.  It was more Three Days Grace than any of the songs on their new album.  And maybe hearing that song raised my expectations too high.

All of that said, I still have Life Starts Here in my CD changer in my car.  And I listen to it when the sports talk radio goes to one of their insane 5 minute commercial breaks.  I listen to a lot, trying to like it, but too often I find myself goign directly to a handful of songs. 

I never had to do that with the two previous albums because they were great from first note, from first lyric, to the last.

Technorati Tags: alternative, Chevelle, Life Starts Here, musci, reviews, Sci-Fi crimes, Three Days Grace