Banned!

I have been banned from eBay. Not formally or anything, but Brittany has made it clear that I am to never again click on the shiny ‘Place Bid’ button that beckons me with its siren’s song from across the glittering wires of the Interwebs. Apparently, or so my lovely wife claims, my insatiable desire to win at all things great and small would eventually lead to our eventual and inevitable financial ruin, should I ever be allowed to participate in another online auction ever again. I’m sure I don’t know what she’s talking about, however, because to my way of thinking, a little healthy competition is good for the soul. Take, for instance, my first (and last) experience with an online auction that took place a couple of weeks ago:

As most of you know by now, both Brittany and myself were are huge fans of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer television program, but what I suspect none of you know is that, while watching the seven seasons of the influential show, I secretly longed to own the coffee mug from which Rupert Giles (Buffy’s watcher, and the guy from those old Taster’s Choice commercials) would sip his hot tea, episode after episode. I wanted it not so much to pretend that I was an aging librarian who enjoys surrounding himself with hot teenage girls with superpowers, but simply because it was a sweet mug. Preferring to get my caffeine fix through the delivery system of cold and carbonated sugar water called Coca-Cola, I’ve never been a coffee drinker – but I do love a spot of hot tea, on occasion. And, since it would behoove me to cut back on drinking the tooth-murdering fizzy liquid that’s landed me in the dentist chair and under the whirring horror of a high-speed drill all too often, I decided that if I was ever in a position to own Giles’ mug, I would switch to drinking water infused with Bodhidharma’s eyelids and never look back. So, I clicked over to eBay…
I found the mug. It’s an Anchor-Hocking restaurant mug of Fire-King Jadeite from the 1940s, with a ‘C’ handle, which is something I learned all about as I quested through the endless listings of old junk for sale on eBay. I eventually found a nice looking piece, logged in and placed my bid. Confident that I had won the day, I signed out of the site and went about my business. However, the next day, I discovered to my horror that some upstart had come along behind me and placed a higher bid. Now, it is at this time that a seasoned eBay user (or anyone with common sense) would tell you that I should have just left the bidding process alone until the auction was almost over, in order to avoid over-inflating the price prematurely. I was aware of this and planned on doing exactly that when I submitted my first bid, but when I logged into the site later to find someone else’s bid trumping mine, it proved too much for my soft ego to bear, and I struck back with a retaliating bid of a few cents more. Then, they bid higher. Then, I bid higher. They went higher still, and I kept pace right along with them, adding a few more pennies with each passing click. Eventually, by the time the auction was down to its last few seconds, I was glaring at my monitor with a furious intensity that left me wild-eyed and maniacal as I kept my cursor hovering over the refresh button, clicking it again and again with the same incessant rabidity of a coked up lab rat hitting his ‘reward’ lever fifty thousand times a minute for a pellet of crack. At last, after everything was all said and done and I’d finally won my prize, I threw my head back and exploded into an unrestrained fit of cacophonous laughter that would put any mad scientist to shame. Victory was mine! MUAHAHAHA!
Of course, I ended up paying way too much for the stupid mug, but at the time I just couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t about to sit back and allow some anonymous loser lurking in the lonely corners of the Internet to outbid me, not as long as there was a penny left in my bank account. It’s just not how I’m wired, I guess. I like to win, even if it means I ultimately lose. This is something that Brittany picked up on, I suppose, and it explains her banning me from any future online auctions of any sort. I can’t say that I blame her, though. She is, of course, right – but I do so hate it when she’s right! The mug itself arrived yesterday, along with the little Jadeite bowl that came as part of the package. I immediately went to the kitchen and washed it out, then proceeded to pour a nice mugful of hot tea into the weighty chalice. Actually, it was Coke. Hey, what can I say? I’m only human, and Bill Cosby was a powerful salesman back in the ’80s, when I was an impressionable youth still easily molded by the likes of Nancy Reagan and Scruff McGruff, the Crime Dog. To this very day, I retain an inexplicable craving for Jell-O Pudding Pops and worry about things like peer pressure and stranger danger. Just say no!

In other news, I continue to endure the special horror of trying to condense a year’s worth of dental work into a few short weeks. The problem with packing so much work into such a short window of time is that it freaking hurts. A lot. I’m sure that as time passes and my mutant healing factor finally kicks into gear, my mouth will recover from the various oral traumas of the past few weeks, but for now all I can do is mope around with aching teeth. It is not, I assure you, an entirely pleasant experience.
Speaking of my dentist, I took some time this past weekend to help him with a little computer problem. Specifically, he’s been having troubles with interference from office equipment jamming up his wi-fi signal, so he asked if I could help run some ethernet cables to physically connect all of his computers rather than continue to rely on the increasingly unstable wi-fi signal. He’s an old friend who’s helped me a lot over the years, so I didn’t hesitate to lend a hand. Of course, my particular set of handyman skills in this capacity ends with the actual ethernet cable itself and well before any sort of manly construction-like work has to be done, so I was of little help when it came time to putting holes in the walls, for example. Still, I tried.
I tried, and the whole thing quickly turned into a miserable greek tragedy. I measured incorrectly and we drilled holes in the wrong places. I couldn’t get the cable to stay taped to the snake as we pulled it through the wall. I completely forgot how to crimp a connector onto the end of the cable, which was my primary purpose for being there to begin with. Then, after my dentist friend lost his drill bit deep within a wall, he proceeded to fish it out with pliers and the drill itself, in much the same way as I imagine he’s prised loose the stubborn teeth of many of his patients. Watching him dig deep into the freshly-drilled cavity to wrest the stubborn drill bit from the dark recesses of the gypsum drywall made me wince with every squeak and scrape of his rusty pliers, and I began to seriously question my next appointment with the man. Seriously, it was like watching Steve Martin freak out on Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors, only the wall wasn’t enjoying it, thank goodness. Eventually, we managed to get one of the four cables pulled through the wall and I successfully crimped on a couple of ends. We still have three left, but I’m not sure if he’ll want my help again. After all, I left an awful lot of holes in his office…



Want some books? 'Course ya do!


NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.


Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
Available now from the following retailers

What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.