Let's get a decent Super Bowl Half Time show for once!
Stop by BUZZFEED for other ways to spread the word!
Friday, February 10, 2012
Clive Barker, one of my literary heroes, was in a coma last week
“My friends, Clive here. I’m at home now after a while in hospital, thanks to a nearly fatal case of Toxic Shock brought on by a visit to my dentist. Apparently this is not uncommon. In my case the dental work unloaded such a spillage of poisonous bacteria into my blood that my whole system crashed, putting me into a coma.I spent several days in Intensive Care, with a machine breathing for me. Later, my Doctors said that they had not anticipated a happy ending until I started to fight, repeatedly pulling out the tubes that I was constantly gagging on. After a few days of nightmarish delusions I woke up to my life again, tired, twenty pounds lighter, but happy to be back from a very dark place. And here in the world I intend to stay. I’ve books to write ,films to make and paintings to paint. I seem to have come home with my sight clearer somehow, and my sense of purpose intensified.Thank you all for your messages your prayers and love. What better reason to wake to life than knowing I have such friends? Again,thank you. My love to you always. Clive.”
If you haven't read his novel IMAJICA you should. It is a fantastic book.
You tell him Adele!!
First off lets have Anderson Cooper give us the low down on what moorlock in training Karl Lagerfield had to say about the singer Adele...
And thanks to Anderson Cooper for putting that moron in his place but here is what the lady had to say for herself...
I have said it before and I will say it again... if you dismiss a woman just because of her dress size- maybe there is something wrong with you not her.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
5 Second Fiction Two Thousand and Forty Six
Was the CIA investigating pizza dough manufacturers? Sorry, that information is on a knead to know basis.
5 Second Fiction Two Thousand and Forty Five
Upper management was always on the lookout for ambitious, clever employees so they could immediately fire them.
5 Second Fiction Two Thousand and Forty Four
Karl tried to prove that a poorly endowed man could satisfy two prostitutes at once, but they made short work of him.
5 Second Fiction Two Thousand and Forty Three
Like most Americans she bought gas so she could drive to work so she could afford to buy more gas so she could drive to work.
The Nick Of Time (and other abrasions): Route d'abbaye Track Two- Oh! Darling
The Nick Of Time (and other abrasions)
Route d'abbaye
Track Four
Oh! Darling
by
Al Bruno III
They were such a mismatched pair. First there was Jason Magwier; diminutive and scheming, his close cropped hair was dark brown, his gaze was as unblinking as it was mournful. Then there was Zeth; cool-eyed, muscular with his graying dreadlocks tied back with a bit of ribbon, his clothes were loose fitting enough to hide his two shoulder holsters and the blade he kept hidden up his sleeve. When he moved it was with an almost feline grace, his ebony skin was marked with old scars.
The men had many adversaries and a great number of them snidely dismissed Zeth as Magwier’s bodyguard. Both men would bristle at such accusations. After all hadn’t they both been saving each other’s lives for over a decade? Hadn’t they explored countless forgotten realms, fought against otherworldly unstoppable menaces and been banned from almost every poetry slam on the west coast?
All this was true and more, but it didn’t change the fact that at this moment, on the long and winding street known as Route d'Abbaye, that Zeth was the only thing keeping Magwier from being throttled by his girlfriend.
“The Lunts?” Lorelei shouted. “You brought me out here to protect the Lunts?”
Zeth was standing in front of the girl, the silver-plated maul he had slung over his right shoulder looked ridiculous.
“Erm...” Magwier said sheepishly, “...in a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Goddess Damnit!” She dove at her lover, he dodged to safety, “The fucking Lunts?”
“Just hear me out!” Magwier said.
Lorelei was jumping up and down with rage, “Give me that hammer Zeth! Just for five minutes.”
Zeth shook his head, “No.”
“Give me that hammer or I swear I’ll turn you into a newt.”
“A newt... right.”
“A big black newt but it’ll be a newt!”
The windows of the nearby brownstones were either barred or smashed open, some had lights burning in them but most were dark. A car passed by the trio and while the roar of its engine didn’t drown out Lorelei’s shouts it made some of her more obscure profanities harder to recognize.
“Now, now,” Magwier kept walking and talking, leading Lorelei and Zeth into a parking lot. It was half empty and some of the cars were covered with decades of dust and grime, “I told you Dr. Flesh is on a paid, one night only killing spree. I just didn’t specify his targets.”
Zeth rolled his eyes.
“You always do this!” Lorelei spoke through clenched teeth, “You give us little nibbles but never enough to let us see the full story.”
Magwier paused and stared off philosophically, “Maybe there is no big story. Maybe life is just a series of interlocking vignettes.”
That only made Lorelei madder, she tried to kick him with her clunky boots but he was too fast, “I am not going to risk my neck for that clan of inbred, monkey-worshipping pigfuckers!”
Zeth snickered at that.
“Please-” Magwier said, “I think you’re judging the situation too harshly.”
“The Lunts are a pack of deviants and criminals.”
“Not all. One of them is a Notary Public.”
“They tried to assassinate my mother six times and have been gunning for me since I was twelve. And of course how could we forget the very bottom of the Lunt family gene pool- Jack Diamond? I guess this means that we’re going to try and save the man that beat me eight ways to Sunday and tried to rape one of my best friends?”
Magwier shrugged, “Probably.”
“We should have killed him by now. I should have killed him.”
This was a familiar argument. Lorelei wanted Jack Diamond dead and wasn’t afraid to do the job herself. She wasn’t even twenty yet but she’d taken more lives than she cared to think about. She liked to think most of her victims had deserved it. “They’re evil,” she said, “and utterly ruthless.”
Magwier stopped so suddenly that Lorelei crashed into him, “Exactly. So who would dare try and kill them all? What if it’s someone worse? What if they succeed?”
It seemed like all of the street had gone quiet. Lorelei opened and closed her mouth several times before sighing with resignation, “What now?”
“Well,” Magwier said, “we’ve got one Hell of a hammer.”
Now it was Zeth’s turn to sigh heavily, “So you did plan that whole thing.”
“That’s the beauty of a serendipity spirit. Everything we need will be here on this one street, every player in this little series of vignettes won’t be able to leave until sunrise.”
Lorelei cocked an eyebrow, “Including us?”
“Well, yes,” Magwier grinned.
“So if everything goes to Hell we won’t be able to get away?” Lorelei said, “We’ll be stuck running up and down the same damn street like rats in a really shitty maze?”
“Errrr... I don’t really see it that way.”
“Damn right you don’t. You never do.” Lorelei cast a glance at Zeth. “am I right? Back me up here.”
Zeth shrugged, “I’m sure he has everything under control...” He paused, “Nope. I can’t even say that with a straight face.”
“And you do realize one of my roommates is a Lunt right?” Lorelei’s face paled.
“By marriage only,” Jason said. “Besides I sent her off on a fools errand. Audra is too far away to get caught up in my little web of circumstance.”
“Audra?”
“Now come along,” he led them from the half-abandoned parking lot, “I have an idea where our quarry might be.”
“Oh!” Lorelei caught up to him again, “Darling...”
“Yes, my sweet?” Magwier turned on his heel.
And Loreleu laid him out flat with a single punch. “My other roommate Judy is the one that’s a Lunt you puking beetle-headed scullion!”
By the time Magwier had gotten back to his feet she had stormed off. “She hit me,” he said as he dabbed at his split lip, “Zeth why did you let her do that?”
Zeth shrugged, “I’m not your bodyguard.”
Good: Oklahoma Legistlator fights the moronic 'Personhood Bill'. Better: She does it by invoking Monty Python. Bad For Al: It would ban masturbation.
State Senator Constance Johnson of Oklahoma City has served Oklahoma’s 48th Senate District since 2005, but it was yesterday’s introduction of Senate Bill 1433 that really pushed her over the edge. The bill sought to define human life as beginning at the moment of conception, before it’s even implanted in the womb, and offers full legal protection to those tiny multicelled lumps. In the words of the bill, “the unborn child at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”
Johnson submitted an amendment of her own to the bill, which would have added the language,
However, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child...
To read the rest of the article click here
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
In honor of my work PC dying and the water heater nearly catching fire today I proudly repost the following...
February:
The Month That’s Trying to Kill Me
Most people have adversaries in their daily lives, a snotty co-worker, a shiftless in-law or rude neighbor. I have a whole month that’s out to get me. For some February is the shortest month, for some it’s Black History month and for others it’s the month of Valentine’s Day.
But for me February is the Month That Dripped Blood.
Fact: I was working at Nice Shopper, and it was the coldest day that Albany had seen in a lifetime and a half. It was close to -20 with the wind chill, so naturally I was sent out to get carts. The wind had blown all the carts to the far end of the parking lot and I could only retrieve them in sets of three because anything more would get blown over. By the time I had finished my hair was swept back from my reddened face and I felt like a character from a Robert London story. There were lines at every cash register so I threw off my coat and set to work. It took my cold-addled mind a few moments realize that everyone one was staring at me. Finally one of the cuter cashiers said to me, “Al. Your nose.”
Visions of frostbite filling my head I grabbed for my face- and my fingers brushed the stalactite of frozen boogers dangling from my right nostril. Sure some of you out there might think that was pretty funny but it’s snot.
(…Auuuuugh yourself this is quality material here.)
That was the start of a long week.
Fact: It was my Junior year of high school, and I was trying to play the field, trying to romance both my beloved Lilly as well as a sophomore girl of dubious sanity but considerable cleavage. I figured my brother and father could do it, why not me? And besides if I was going to try and get my friends to call me ‘The Love Machine’ I damn well better be sure to back it up.
Of course I hadn’t actually told either girl that I was playing the field, I guess I was trying to be more or less the stealth bomber of love. It was the afternoon of Valentine’s Day that most of my friends started trying to beat me up. Now with my friends this wasn’t necessarily a rare occurrence but they had never been so organized before. Finally I confronted them, hoping to reassert my position as the Alpha Nerd with a combination of guts and memorized dialogue from Doctor Who. Then I saw each and every one of those sneaky bastards standing around Lily. Now this was too much. They were trying to move in on my main squeeze! I barged in the middle of them and asked what the Hell was going on.
That was when Lily confronted me with her Valentine’s card. Well, actually it wasn’t her Valentine’s Day card, it was the other girl’s but I had accidentally switched them.
Yeah, that the start of a long week.
Fact: My first bout with kidney stones came the same week that my beloved mother-in-law had a heart attack. (And that is no sarcasm, I do love her bunches.) I tried to stick it out, hoping the whole thing would literally pass but no luck there. So I had to have my wife drop me off at the emergency room so I could get better while she took care of our daughter, they were both exhausted by the ordeal.
To this day I am not sure what route my wife took to the Emergency Room but I can only assume somewhere she took a side trip to the Twilight Zone because that night was one of the strangest of my life. It began simply enough with lots of waiting then when they finally admitted me they had me dress in one of those drafty hospital gowns and left me sitting on a bed in the hallway.
Why you might ask? Because it was another cold February and all the local homeless people were checking themselves in for phantom ailments so they could stay warm. The place was packed; it was standing room only, or in my case trying to sleep in the hallway with your ass hanging out room only. The hobo sitting on a bed closest to me decided to strike up a conversation, and if I hadn’t been so tired and miserable I might have asked him what Tom Waits song he had escaped from to torment me.
Instead I just listened to his tale of travel, of his Native American wife he only got to see twice a year or so because she lived in Canada.
And by the way, Canadian women? Between this and all the nerds who say that have girlfriends up there I have to say get some standards for heavens sake.
Apparently my hobo friend took my bleary eyed indifference as a sign of friendship so he tried to give me one of his less filthy hats as a present but that was when the doctor showed up to get me the medical care I so desperately needed. I was never so happy for a painful and invasive prostate exam and yes that includes the one at the Eden Studios Christmas party.
With a prescription in hand I called a cab to take me home and wouldn’t you know it of all the cabbies I could have ended up with I got the one who wanted to try and get me to invest in the television pilot he was trying to film in Vermont. This was not what I needed because I can honestly say as that as a wannabe writer that loves to talk up his latest hopeless project there is nothing more annoying than a wannabe writer trying to talk up his latest hopeless project.
The cab ride ended before he could get into the intricacies of his series bible but when you’ve heard the pitch for one series that combines elements from Lovejoy and GI JOE you’ve heard them all.
So I got home and unlocked the front door, only to find my wife had put the door chain on as well. I chuckled over this and knocked on the door about ten minutes later I remember my wife mentioning that she wanted nothing more than to take a sleeping pill and turn in. After another ten minutes of homeless knocking I started walking to the local 24 hour diner so I could use the payphone and wake my missus up.
It was going to be a long walk.
So, where does that leave us today? First things off I woke up feeling profoundly squishy inside and I spent most of my shift trying not to erupt into a series of farts that would sound like an AMC Hornet drag racing with a tank full of bad gas. Then I had a training seminar in the afternoon, I believe it was focused on budgeting our time more effectively to improve shareholder value… well at least that’s what I think it was about. I fell asleep ten minutes in because I had been up all night writing blog entries.
Somehow I made it through my shift without skidmarking my underwear so I headed home, but first ironically enough, I had to stop for gas. I’d been putting off refueling because it had been so darn cold out the last few days but there was no putting it off any longer. I got to the gas station, popped open the tank and then realized I was on the wrong side of the pump so I spent a few moments dodging other cars and getting my car lined up correctly. Then I went in and bought twenty dollars worth of gas. And I started pumping.
But there was something wrong with all the pumps on that side of the station, and it was pumping gas at about the speed of a penny a second. As I stood there shivering, watching my twenty dollars of gas move like twenty dollars of molasses I thought to myself- it’s gonna be another long February.
But aren’t they all?
But for me February is the Month That Dripped Blood.
Fact: I was working at Nice Shopper, and it was the coldest day that Albany had seen in a lifetime and a half. It was close to -20 with the wind chill, so naturally I was sent out to get carts. The wind had blown all the carts to the far end of the parking lot and I could only retrieve them in sets of three because anything more would get blown over. By the time I had finished my hair was swept back from my reddened face and I felt like a character from a Robert London story. There were lines at every cash register so I threw off my coat and set to work. It took my cold-addled mind a few moments realize that everyone one was staring at me. Finally one of the cuter cashiers said to me, “Al. Your nose.”
Visions of frostbite filling my head I grabbed for my face- and my fingers brushed the stalactite of frozen boogers dangling from my right nostril. Sure some of you out there might think that was pretty funny but it’s snot.
(…Auuuuugh yourself this is quality material here.)
That was the start of a long week.
Fact: It was my Junior year of high school, and I was trying to play the field, trying to romance both my beloved Lilly as well as a sophomore girl of dubious sanity but considerable cleavage. I figured my brother and father could do it, why not me? And besides if I was going to try and get my friends to call me ‘The Love Machine’ I damn well better be sure to back it up.
Of course I hadn’t actually told either girl that I was playing the field, I guess I was trying to be more or less the stealth bomber of love. It was the afternoon of Valentine’s Day that most of my friends started trying to beat me up. Now with my friends this wasn’t necessarily a rare occurrence but they had never been so organized before. Finally I confronted them, hoping to reassert my position as the Alpha Nerd with a combination of guts and memorized dialogue from Doctor Who. Then I saw each and every one of those sneaky bastards standing around Lily. Now this was too much. They were trying to move in on my main squeeze! I barged in the middle of them and asked what the Hell was going on.
That was when Lily confronted me with her Valentine’s card. Well, actually it wasn’t her Valentine’s Day card, it was the other girl’s but I had accidentally switched them.
Yeah, that the start of a long week.
Fact: My first bout with kidney stones came the same week that my beloved mother-in-law had a heart attack. (And that is no sarcasm, I do love her bunches.) I tried to stick it out, hoping the whole thing would literally pass but no luck there. So I had to have my wife drop me off at the emergency room so I could get better while she took care of our daughter, they were both exhausted by the ordeal.
To this day I am not sure what route my wife took to the Emergency Room but I can only assume somewhere she took a side trip to the Twilight Zone because that night was one of the strangest of my life. It began simply enough with lots of waiting then when they finally admitted me they had me dress in one of those drafty hospital gowns and left me sitting on a bed in the hallway.
Why you might ask? Because it was another cold February and all the local homeless people were checking themselves in for phantom ailments so they could stay warm. The place was packed; it was standing room only, or in my case trying to sleep in the hallway with your ass hanging out room only. The hobo sitting on a bed closest to me decided to strike up a conversation, and if I hadn’t been so tired and miserable I might have asked him what Tom Waits song he had escaped from to torment me.
Instead I just listened to his tale of travel, of his Native American wife he only got to see twice a year or so because she lived in Canada.
And by the way, Canadian women? Between this and all the nerds who say that have girlfriends up there I have to say get some standards for heavens sake.
Apparently my hobo friend took my bleary eyed indifference as a sign of friendship so he tried to give me one of his less filthy hats as a present but that was when the doctor showed up to get me the medical care I so desperately needed. I was never so happy for a painful and invasive prostate exam and yes that includes the one at the Eden Studios Christmas party.
With a prescription in hand I called a cab to take me home and wouldn’t you know it of all the cabbies I could have ended up with I got the one who wanted to try and get me to invest in the television pilot he was trying to film in Vermont. This was not what I needed because I can honestly say as that as a wannabe writer that loves to talk up his latest hopeless project there is nothing more annoying than a wannabe writer trying to talk up his latest hopeless project.
The cab ride ended before he could get into the intricacies of his series bible but when you’ve heard the pitch for one series that combines elements from Lovejoy and GI JOE you’ve heard them all.
So I got home and unlocked the front door, only to find my wife had put the door chain on as well. I chuckled over this and knocked on the door about ten minutes later I remember my wife mentioning that she wanted nothing more than to take a sleeping pill and turn in. After another ten minutes of homeless knocking I started walking to the local 24 hour diner so I could use the payphone and wake my missus up.
It was going to be a long walk.
So, where does that leave us today? First things off I woke up feeling profoundly squishy inside and I spent most of my shift trying not to erupt into a series of farts that would sound like an AMC Hornet drag racing with a tank full of bad gas. Then I had a training seminar in the afternoon, I believe it was focused on budgeting our time more effectively to improve shareholder value… well at least that’s what I think it was about. I fell asleep ten minutes in because I had been up all night writing blog entries.
Somehow I made it through my shift without skidmarking my underwear so I headed home, but first ironically enough, I had to stop for gas. I’d been putting off refueling because it had been so darn cold out the last few days but there was no putting it off any longer. I got to the gas station, popped open the tank and then realized I was on the wrong side of the pump so I spent a few moments dodging other cars and getting my car lined up correctly. Then I went in and bought twenty dollars worth of gas. And I started pumping.
But there was something wrong with all the pumps on that side of the station, and it was pumping gas at about the speed of a penny a second. As I stood there shivering, watching my twenty dollars of gas move like twenty dollars of molasses I thought to myself- it’s gonna be another long February.
But aren’t they all?
Monday, February 6, 2012
No PRICE BREAKS AND HEARTACHES this week...
Fell a bit behind schedule... blame a busy weekend and SKYRIM-incuded writers block.
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