Stop pondering how many licks it takes to get to the middle of a Chicken McNugget... because Bullet Sunday starts now...

   
• Blacklisted. As a James Spader fan, it was a no-brainer to add his latest television effort, The Blacklist to my DVR. But the previews and ads for the show kind of led me to believe that it was a bad Silence of the Lambs rip-off with Spader as a poor man's Hannibal Lecter, so I kept putting it off (there's already a television version of that running). Well, yesterday I finally got around to watching it... and am completely hooked. Yes, there are familiar elements here, but the show itself is so much more...

But the highlight is Spader, of course. Very few people could pull off this role in a way that's so darkly entertaining yet somehow likable. This... this... is everything the Hannibal television show should have been, but doesn't quite reach. Highest recommendation. If you've been missing it, the iTunes Music Store currently has a Season Pass for the show on sale for $35 so you can start from the beginning (and I recommend you do).

   
• Lion. If you haven't yet read about the lion cub that was rescued by two guys from the Modisa Wildlife Project in Botswana, here you go!

The TED Talk by the Modisa Wildlife Project's Mikkel Legarth is also worth a look.

   
• Faith. I... do not... have the... words... God exists, and he's working at Taco Bell...

I'll be trying these bad boys post-haste!

   
• Visits. Most "States I've Visited" maps are a binary "yes or no" type affair. Jeremy Nixon has come up with an alternative that provides a much better picture...

Red states are those you've barely visited. Orange states you know a little better. Blue states you've spent quite a lot of time in. Green states are those you know extremely well. Cool, huh? You can make your own map over at Jeremy's Defocus Blog.

   
• Dyslexic. I was very lucky that I was diagnosed early and got help when I was young enough to make a difference in my life. I'm also fortunate that my form of dyslexia is mild and I was able to train my brain to cope with it relatively easily. Still, dyslexia is something I have to deal with every day, so I was really happy to see this amazing project on Kickstarter called "I wonder what it's like to be dyslexic" which features a book that attempts to illustrate what it's like to struggle with reading. They've reached their funding goal, but such a beautiful and educational book deserves to be seen by everybody, so here you go!

More information can be found on Kickstarter.

   
• Storm. My thoughts are with everybody in The Philippines after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the region this past week. The devastation looks horrendous, and they are estimating the dead could top 10,000 people across the country. As I type this, the storm has landed in Vietnam, and is expected to cause heavy rains and flooding in the northern part of the country... including Hanoi, where I was visiting just last month...

Haiyan chart image taken from NOAA.

As if these storms aren't frightening enough, scientists are projecting that things are only going to get worse. Severe storms are going to form more frequently and be stronger than ever before. If science is right, life on this planet is going to have to change quite dramatically over the next century. Whether we like it or not.

   
See you in seven days.

I always love watching lightning crash outside an airplane window.

But not as much as I love thunderstorms causing a landing delay.

Okay... I'm totally lying. I don't love either of those things. But that's just part of the travel game, and it does happen from time to time. All you can do is hope that you've drank enough alcohol that you don't mind so much. Otherwise? Not fun. Well, it is fun to track your flight path after you've landed and see what crazy loop-de-do holding pattern your flight took...

Flight tracking map courtesy of FlightAware!

   
And so now it's 12:40am after one long-ass day of travel and all I want to do is go to bed.

But my internal clock is still on West Coast time and there are people screaming outside my hotel room, so I guess you really don't always get what you want.

And speaking of that...

   
Guess it's a good thing I brought a raincoat.

I've been writing drafts of emails all night. Since I am leaving work early tomorrow, I want to make sure that I get as much done as possible this evening. It was a good plan, except I just looked over at the clock and it's 1:30am. Oops.

The mountain passes are sure to be horrible (100% chance of snow!) which means it will probably take me three or four hours to make the two hour drive. I hope I don't fall asleep on the way over.

Or get in a wreck.

But, then again, it's not like I put much faith in weather forecasts. They're mostly wrong anyways. It could very well end up being 80° and sunny on the mountain pass tomorrow. You just don't know. Seriously, you don't.

For the longest time, I always assumed that the reason weather forecasts were so inaccurate was because the meteorologists are all idiots. They must be looking at the satellite data wrong or something. So I decided I'd be all smart and look at the data myself...

And now I'm like "What in the hell is THAT supposed to mean?

No wonder meteorologists don't know what the fuck they are doing. It looks like somebody put a map of Washington in a Spin-Art machine or something.

Remember Spin-Art? Where there's a kind-of record player that you stick a sheet of paper on... then dribble paint on it while it spins so the centrifugal force splatters the paint around? The result is supposed to be "art" but always ended up looking like somebody puked on a paper or something...

REAL working motor? FUN and easy FUN? Sign me up!

But sign me up tomorrow. I really should try and get some sleep tonight.

There's nothing quite like staring at weather satellite data during a hurricane all day long to make you feel utterly helpless. With each passing hour I find myself thinking of all my friends in the path of armageddon, knowing full well that I have nothing to offer them except my frantic hopes for their safety.

As I type this, "Hurricane Sandy" has made landfall and is ravaging New England with a surge of floods, 90-mile-an-hour winds, and resulting power outages. The photos being released are horrific, with many places I know ending up under water.

A lot of which will clear up after the surge has passed, though the damage will have been done, I'm sure.

But what about all the water that's collected below ground in tunnels and subways and the like? It's all going to have to be pumped out... and that's something that's going to take a lot of time (and a lot of money) to make happen. For a city like New York which relies so heavily on their subways for transportation, this is a frightening prospect.

But New York City is nothing if not a symbol for endurance under pressure, so I have no doubt they will prevail tonight... and in the future.

All my wishes for a speedy recovery to everyone who weathers this storm.

It is really thundering out there. Here's hoping the walls stay standing.

And so the final rushes for THRICE Fiction No. 5 have been sent off to the Editor in Chief. Once RW has had a chance to approve everything, I'll start running out all the various files needed to unleash our fifth issue on the world.

This has been a rougher ride to completion than usual thanks to a bug with Adobe InDesign on my new MacBook. I ended up losing a full week of work-time while I was in Nassau and Atlanta, so... instead of being able to get ahead while I was traveling, I ended up getting way behind.

It's always something.

And right now... it's lightning and rain to go along with the thunder...

Gotta love a summer storm.

Whenever anybody outside of Washington State asks where I'm from, I just say "Seattle" because that's pretty much the only place in Washington that anybody has ever heard of. Seattle, of course has a reputation for rain (which is true... but not quite to the extreme as people might believe).

Anyway, it's been pouring down rain here in Georgia, which has people who know I'm from "Seattle" saying "thanks for bringing the rain with you!" But not sarcastically, as usual! Apparently, there's been quite a dry spell, and farmers are glad to be getting some moisture this summer.

Though, if the forecast is any indication, they'll be happy I'm leaving this weekend...

In the meanwhile, it is crazy wet outside, so I'm doing my best to stay indoors.

Which is good because I need to be working, except... Adobe has a big problem with their software running on the new MacBooks and MacBook Airs. For example, Adobe InDesign (the program I use to do page layout for things like THRICE Fiction Magazine) crashes a horrible death almost constantly. I've scoured for tips on how to make it happen less often, but it's still an impossible situation. So now I am in the horrible position of having to wait until I get home before I can finish a number of projects that are due... including the latest issue of THRICE Fiction Magazine.

This sucks so hard.

Almost as hard as the length of my work day. Right now I am so exhausted that the only thing that keeps me going is 5-Hour Energy shots and cookies. But the cumulative effect of downing three 5-Hour Energy shots to stay awake the past 15 hours is starting to make my brain haze over. The fact that I've got another four hours left to go doesn't bode well for my sanity.

Now, if you'll excuse me, a sea urchin just waddled up to my desk and asked me if I want to go see a movie with him and his friend the kangaroo (who, oddly enough, is named "Mr. Camel"). Since I could use a break, I think I'm going to accompany them... though I hope it's not another art-house cinema festival, because last time I never did manage to get the smell of popcorn out of my ferret.

So this is what the weather is like at End of Days.

Since Saturday we've been flipping between gorgeous blue skies one minute... followed by thunder showers just minutes later... followed by gorgeous blue skies again soon after. And while the changes are shockingly rapid, they're actually really cool to watch. Today on the way to work I watched a rain shower crash down from the mountains like a wave. As I was driving home I saw a thundershower retreat to the horizon like smoke in the wind. It's weird. It's wacky. It's wonderful in a way that only Mother Nature can deliver.

Which leads me to...

The Newsroom premiered Sunday on HBO. It's weird. It's wacky. It's wonderful in a way that only Aaron Sorkin can deliver.

Remarkably (for HBO anyways), they've just made the first episode available on YouTube in its entirety. Because of Sorkin's near-flawless run on The West Wing, his totally-flawless run on Sports Night, and his mostly-flawless run on Studio 60, I had no choice but to give it a watch... despite the rather shocking number of poor reviews it's been pulling.

Unsurprisingly, I really liked it.

Partly because it stars Emily Mortimer, whom I love more than chocolate pudding, but mostly because Sorkin's commentary on the state of "news" in this country mirrors my own to a scary degree.

Not to say there aren't problems. First of all, this first episode felt exactly like the first episodes of Studio 60 and Sports Night. Twice on the opening similarities I could forgive... but three times feels like Sorkin is fresh out of ideas on how to start a new show. Second of all, too many situations go too dramatic too fast. Not every little thing in life has to end in high drama (except if you're Aaron Sorkin, apparently). Lastly*, the show takes place not in present-day... but back in 2010. This means every show is going to be re-living news that already happened (starting with the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster this episode). I can only guess that this is due to Sorkin wanting to run the news as it really went down instead of approximating news events that are currently going on. Yawn. The West Wing handled a kind of "faux current" reality so beautifully, why is The Newsroom stuck in the past? I'm hoping this doesn't end up boring me.

Regardless, I'm just happy to have Sorkin back. Nobody writes television like he does, and anything he's involved in is bound to be worth watching. You can decide for yourself by clicking over to YouTube.

*Well, not lastly. "Lastly" would be that The Newsroom is so overrun with placement advertising for Dell Computer that I have to wonder if Michael Dell is secretly blowing Aaron Sorkin in addition to handing over sticky wads of cash. It's downright embarrassing, and a huge distraction.

Another week, another Bullet Sunday.

   
• Colder. The weather is definitely taking a turn for the worse. This week I started having to scrape frost off my car windows in the morning, which is never a good sign. This means that snow, crazy-ass winter drivers, travel delays, and freezing my balls off any time I step outside can't be too far behind. On the bright side, doesn't this mean that Santa will be coming soon?

   
• Accessorize. I'm not much of an interior decorator, but my kitchen now looks about 210% better thanks to the addition of a Jägermeister bar mat next to my sink! Thanks to Lynne for thinking of me when she ran across it. How totally cool is this?

   
• Peel. Despite constant moisturizing, my sunburned skin finally decided to start peeling... three whole weeks after getting burned. Like Judgement Day, I guess you can only delay it, not stop it altogether. Such a bummer, BECAUSE IT ITCHES! IT ITCHES SO BAD!!

   
• Annual. There's a meme floating around about what you were doing a year ago. It asks a lot of complicated questions about relationships, diet, work, and other stuff I'm not interested in answering... BUT it did get me curious as to what in the heck I actually was doing a year ago. Fortunately, I have a blog so I can look that up.

Apparently, on October 23rd, 2010, I was recovering from being run down in the street. All while blogging about flying to Albuquerque and not masturbating. Good times. Good times.

   
• Annual Redux. Ah, you may ask, but what were you doing two years ago today? Well, okay, you probably didn't ask, but I was curious. Turns out I was SWIMMING WITH FRICKIN' DOLPHINS!

Wow. This year kind of sucks compared to that!

   
And now, speaking of things that suck, it's time to mentally prepare for tomorrow being Monday... by swallowing a handful of sleeping pills and letting nature take its course.

I labored six hours on Labor Day, which is pretty much the opposite of how I should have been spending my time.

It happens.

Like the weather.

Last night it was so chilly that I had to close my window and add a blanket to my bed for the first time in months. Tonight I'm combatting the heat by wrapping an ice pack around my neck. The week is only supposed to get worse from here, with temperatures escalating to 97° by Thursday. I don't know why, but this year I am really ready for summer to be over. I just don't want to spend any more days sweating it out in temperatures like this.

Until the snow comes, of course. I'm sure then I'll have a different attitude entirely.

Now let's see if I can manage to get a couple hours sleep while it's still a holiday, shall we?

Despite living with snowy winters most of my life, I can never seem to get used to that first snowfall.

Eventually I become accustomed the weather and it doesn't bother me that much. But today?

In the morning when going to work...

   
At night when going back home...

   
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

Why can't they make no-stick snow coatings for cars?