From the drive home last night. Cops out in Billerica. Usually there would be a construction crew or two with them, but not this time.

Oh Brickah

We were in Target last weekend when it became known that my step daughter has an interest in reading Twilight. She’s an insatiable 10 year old reader and we knew this would be coming eventually.

My brother loves the stories. My step kid’s dad once, long ago, told us that he’d read them and they were okay. I have never read them. While I have long been a huge fan of the horror genre (but not the gore genre, horror does not necessitate blood and guts) I have never been much for vampire stories, but what I’d heard about how the Twilight stories piss on the mythology made me want to vomit.

Jen did a little research and got some mixed signals as to whether or not her daughter would be able to handle the book so she borrowed a copy from my sister and started reading.

Her review was similar to a few I have read. It starts out terrible, then gets interesting, then gets terrible and boring. She got as far as the baseball game (really? really?) and gave up.

Oh well.

She told me a lot of what was going on and it sounds like the vampire genre gets raped without mercy. It made me think back to the few vampire novels I’d read in the past. There is ‘Salem’s Lot by Steven King, of course, which blends into the later Dark Tower books. Dan Simmons has written a number of novels where the bad guy was some variation on a vampire, and in one case the bad guy was actually Dracula. Was that one called Children of the Night or something like that? There was also a series by Brian Lumley that explained vampirism as a parasite. Those were pretty good, but I can’t remember the name of the series to save my life.

Of course there is also Dracula by Bram Stoker. You don’t have any of the others unless you have that one.

So I started to get curious about what else there might be that is worth looking at. I Googled, “top 10 vampire novels” and found a few good lists. I picked up I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (sp? Sorry) and Fevre Dream by George R R Martin. I will start into those as soon as I finish reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, which I got for Christmas and am about a third of the way though.

So my request of you, dear readers, is to make some more recommendations. I’m aware of Anne Rice and will eventually read some of her’s, so I’m looking for something other than that.

What do you say, readers? Can you sell me on some vampire stories or what?

Thanks in advance!

I checked the outside temperature when I got into the car this morning.  It was 9 degrees.  Winter started about two weeks ago and I would say, judging by the frozen landscape, that winter has fully arrived.

Crud.

On the bright side, we’re only about 2.75 months away from Spring.  Each frozen day brings us closer to warmth.

I went to the gym yesterday.  Yippee.  My legs hurt today.  I could barely manage any actual exercise at the gym because I am so far gone that just getting onto the machines wears me out.  I have a bag full of work out clothes and sneakers in the car so I can stop at the gym on the way home.  We signed up for the super-mega plan so we can actually go to other branches instead of just the one where we signed up.  There are two that are sort of on my way home.  I might stop at one of them and check it out.  If it’s not to my liking I’ll go to the one near home, otherwise I’ll stay and do my 22 seconds worth of working out.

My lovely wife’s back was hurting really bad this morning.  I hope she feels better now.  It tends to loosen up for her as the day goes on, so hopefully it’s feeling better by the minute.  I love you sweetie.  Hang in there.

I haven’t received any more spam on Blogger since the spam related post, but I haven’t gotten around to switching the comments from open to moderated either.  I don’t want to do that, I feel incredibly lame doing that, but I think I will end up doing that.

I have gotten spam regularly on twitter, which is odd because I barely ever post there.  I enjoy following twitter while watching the Bruins because 90% of the people I follow are also watching the Bruins.  It works out well that way.  Still though, when I do get around to using twitter I regularly get spam mentions… or whatever they call them now.  You know, some idiot spammer puts my @user name in a tweet so I get some horrible link sent to me.  Assholes.

This weekend also saw spam coming to me on Facebook for the first time ever.  Apparently some douche nozzle slimy scumbag was “liking” things on my account.  I logged in on New Year’s day and had a bunch of things in my newsfeed that had no business being there.  I changed my password and started scouring my like lists.  I think I have removed them all now, but who knows.  Facebook tends to make it difficult to find such things.

On top of all that, yesterday I got two telemarketer calls on my cell phone.  I was furious.  Not only am I on every do-not-call list in the known universe, but I was on call yesterday so any time my phone rings I start to panic, and if the number is one I don’t recognize I go into full, unabridged terror mode.  Then to find out in both cases that it was some ass wipe trying to sell me something, I wanted to start strangling people.

But other than that, I had a great weekend.  The only bad part about it was that it’s over and we’re all back at work.  Oh, and the traffic getting to work sucked ass today. 

Things to look forward to in the New Year…

We are thinking of going back to San Diego this year.  Maybe during one of the school vacations.  Jen and I have begun prepping for this possibility by re-joining Planet Fitness.  I like the idea of a gym who’s corporate culture is one that allows for people like me to make idiots of themselves without being openly ridiculed.  I know it doesn’t work that way in reality, but I still appreciate the attempt.

The 2012 RPM Challenge begins in 29 days.  How will working on a computer with lots of editing capabilities change the way I work?  How will actually being in a band at the same time I work on the project affect things?  Who knows.

All I know, is all the signs are pointing to 2012 being a good year.  2011 was over in the blink of an eye.  Hopefully 2012 won’t be in such a hurry to turn into 2013.

Jen got season one of the show The Big Bang Theory on DVD for Christmas and we just watched the first few episodes.

Frankly I am offended by the stupidity and utter unbelievability of the writing. I mean do you really expect me to believe that a genius physicist would refer to the force of gravity as, “32 feet per second per second?”

That is absolute nonsense! Anyone who knows anything about physics knows that any real physicist would use metric units! The line should have been, “-9.8 meters per second squared.”

But noooooo, the ignorant writers need to dumb it down for the unwashed American masses and use English units. Freakin heathens!

Is there a downside to creating intense rivalries in the NHL? I believe there is, and I am living proof.

The team I detest above all others is the Montreal Canadiens. There are a bunch of teams that receive nearly the same level of hate from me. Among them are the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers.

Those two teams are playing in the NHL Winter Classic at this very moment. The intensity of the rivalry between the Boston Bruins and both of those teams is the source of my intense dislike.

I loathe the Flyers and I abhor the Rangers and that is why I am out running errands instead of home watching the Winter Classic.

Sorry, NHL.

This is a slurpy machine in a convenience store in Windham, NH that tells everything you need to know about the store’s customer base…

I get maybe 2-3 comments a month.  I used to get maybe one comment a month but the numbers have ballooned recently.  Unfortunately the new comments are spam.  I got two spam comments last night.  Now, given how few comments I get it would seem really, seriously lame to have to start moderating, wouldn’t it?  I think I am going to though.  Even two spams a month is completely annoying.

On an unrelated note, our Christmas tree is down and the decorations are being put away.  At least until next December.  I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and I hope Santa loaded you up with loot!

Finally… why is the NHL Winter Classic today instead of yesterday?  Also, in case you hadn’t heard, last night they moved the start time to 3pm.  Still though… why the day after New Year?  Lame.