August 2005 Archives

over at Ribcage today.

Now let's see if I can finish another one and set it to auto-post for next Wednesday, as my computer is going into a box tomorrow and it is not coming out until a week from Saturday.

In the new apartment, of course.

Somewhere in this world there are bound advance reader's copies of Eating Stella Style. I hope they get to me before I get out of Connecticut.

I want to show it to people and say, "See these forty pages in the front here? I wrote the first draft of these forty pages in three days, to pull off the most outstanding feat in the history of publishing!"

Of course, I'll leave out mention of the month of rewrites. Or that I worked from a hundred pages of my father's notes... though that's impressive as well, I suppose.

After my recent open-armed acceptance into the world of good credit, I decided to look into my credit reports.

Legally, the three biggest credit agencies have to provide you a copy of your credit at no cost, at least once a year. www.annualcreditreport.com is the place to go. It's all online, and it's supposed to be painless.

Equifax is the big one, the one that I was most interested in. However, their online registration adds an extra step: Identity Validation.

They ask you two questions based on your credit report, your personal credit history. Two questions that only the real you should know.

For Elise, the two questions were: What bank is your car loan drawn on? and What are your monthly payments on the car loan? They're multiple choice and like I said... painless.

Now then, my credit report pulled up these two questions...

In August of 2000 you took out a mortgage through what lender?

For what terms is said mortgage?

Allright, allright, allright, allright, allright... seeing as I was only fifteen years old in 2000, seeing as I have never even danced around the idea of a mortgage... this question was a little more than puzzling: was actually quite scary.

Could my good credit be the product of identity theft: that was the real question.

Still there were options to choose "None of the above." So I chose them, hoping that the question was just one of the trick variety.

I failed the validation, cancelling my online credit report and leaving me with only one other option. To send a formal letter by US Mail requesting my report in 6 to 8 weeks.

Because now, under the threat of identiy theft, is when I want to wait 6 to 8 weeks to see what the hell is going on.

Then I discovered that the first step to purchasing your online credit report from Equifax was the validation... so I decided to answer the question until I got it right and then pay the $9.50 to see what is going on.

Same mortgage question... completely different answers. Not a single answer that was the same. Since none of above was incorrect the first time and these answers were all new, I selected none of the above again and got into my credit report. Not for free, as I was rightfully owed, but for the $9.50. But a small price to see the truth.

The truth was boring. My credit is clean. There's nothing there. Just one credit card that has been payed on time every single month for an entire year. (Which is why my credit is suddenly good, I hit the one year mark on my credit card.) It is, no kidding the ONLY thing listed anywhere on my credit other than recent inquiries like the power company, Cingular and etc.

My second credit card isn't even listed... it is apparently issued under Queequeg Films Inc.'s credit and I now know that it is basically useless to me for credit building purposes. So I'll pay it off and use it only in emergencies.

Most importantly, there is no history of a mortgage, of applying for a mortgage, of anything to do with a mortgage. Thank God. The only problem now was...

Not only did Equifax fuck me into buying my report, they downright SCARED me into buying it. You can't go anywhere on their site without whirling, flashing things slapping you in the face with the words "IDENTITY THEFT" and then they tell me that they can't give me my free report because I answered the question about "my mortgage" incorrectly?

I fired off an angry email, requesting not only a refund but an audit of their "Identity Validation" software.

They replied with this fuck you:

Please review the TERMS OF USE that you accepted when ordering this product. ALL SALES OF ONE-TIME PRODUCTS ARE FINAL. You will not be entitled to a refund.

So I called them up and they put me on hold, listening to their hold message that kept repeating: "Over ten million people are victims of identity theft. Are you one of them? Order our special....."

The short of it is... I got a refund, but the woman was quick to note that it was a "One-time courtesy refund." Because, "We NEVER give out refunds." To get it, I had to explain that I accepted their terms of service under the false pretenses that I had a mortgage on my report and that, "Quite frankly, I'm a little concerned that your computer system thought that I did." That I knew that I should be aware of identity theft, but never thought that I had to be concerned about Equifax's handling of my own financial information.

Bitches. I think I've gotten really good at being a dick on the phone in these past few weeks.

Still couldn't get the cable company to give me HBO outside of a twenty channel premium package. Maybe one day, maybe one day.

Credit scores made no sense to me, other than I knew that they pissed me off.

But Elise's grandparents bought her this Suze Orman book with an embarassing title. (The Money Book for the Young Broke and Fabulous)

I skimmed through the entire thing last night and the book as a whole makes no sense to me. Not what she is saying, just the actual format of the book. It's clearly written for teens, and yet devotes an entire eighth of the book to retirement. I have a feeling that she's just recycling some of her past books work into a new candy colored teen version that took little to no effort.

That said, the first chapter is exactly what I've wanted to know for years. A concise explanation of credit scores and exactly how they are derived. Finally.

That said, other than that I now have two low-limit high-interest credit cards... quite honestly, I don't see how I could have built that much credit.

Earlier this week, I was approved for Cingular service with no deposit, a free camera-phone and $150 cash back.

Today, I called to schedule switching the power into my name at the apartment. The woman said, "It's going to be a $185 deposit unless you want me to run your credit and in some instances the credit check will allow us to waive that deposit." It didn't sound promising. In fact, I started to panic because even though I had just read Suze Orman's book... I wasn't sure if running up too many credit checks was a bad thing. We all know that applying for too many credit cards is, so I'm not sure about credit checks in general. Lord knows that with this apartment I've had A LOT of credit checks in the past few weeks.

But of course I had to go for the credit check, because who knows? I was just approved by Cingular, so I must be doing something right.

"You must be doing something right!" the woman said when it all went through. The deposit, waived.

I am confounded by all of this. When the heck did this happen?

According to that book, 35% of your credit score is based on paying your bills on time. Credit card bills, phone bills, any and all bills that you have. It's the biggest percentage of your credit score, but up until I was accepted for my first credit card ten months ago, I have never had ANY bills.

Now I have two credit card bills, apartment rent, the cell phone, cable, power, water... but I've yet to have actually been billed for anything other than the credit cards.

The only thing I can think of is... our Netflix DVDs, they were always addressed to me. It was technically MY account, even though the account was attached to my mother's debit card. Could that have been building my credit the whole time? Something to think about. Might be a nice little way to build credit.

Fox News keeps saying that New Orleans will be submerged in a vast cesspool of toxic waste; the city's iconic graveyards, "giving up their dead."

Here I thought the supervolcano at Yellowstone was the natural disaster that would blindside us in my lifetime.

But seriously, can we get all of America's scientists to Yellowstone today, just as they should have been to New Orleans many, many years ago.

As long as we're all horrified, it's important to know that this volcano at Yellowstone erupts with the power of 1,000 "regular" volcanoes. It erupts about every 600,000 years, but is now overdue, having not erupted in 640,000. The last eruption of a supervolcano on this planet was 74,000 years ago in Sumatra. Coincidentally, humans almost went extinct between 70 and 80 thousand years ago, the world's population dwindling to only 5,000. This would most likely be the result of the poisonous fallout of such an eruption.

Fossilized Rhinos that choked to death were found under a layer of ash dating back to the last Yellowstone eruption. They were 1,000 miles away.

Back to Katrina, they're saying that there could be as many as a million refugees... something that will surely, hopefully make us ask, Where is our money, where are our TROOPS more necessary?

An original screen print by Jay Ryan of The Bird Machine.

Elise and I ordered two signed and numbered prints from his Andrew Bird set to put in our new apartment. They're beyond cool.

There is--no surprise--a new story over at Ribcage today.

Cingular approved my credit and Amazon shipped my phone two day for free.

I got the activated service and a really nice Sony camera-phone for only $49 and after I pay my first bill I can send out for a $200 mail-in rebate.

To think I purchased a $230 phone outright and was begging Sprint to let me put down a bigger deposit on my parent's plan and now Cingular is paying ME $150 and an equivalent phone to go with them!

Sweet vindication.

Buy a D-Link Extreme-G wireless router and nothing else at Best Buy and these are the receipts you get and this is what they look like lined end to end next to a girl on the floor.

I accepted the fact that my awesome new Sprint phone is as useless as a five-legged table. I'm okay with that. I'm going to go return it tomorrow.

And then I decided on my very own, very expensive Cingular plan. But it's just as expensive as all the others, so I can't complain. And it seems that everyone I know is on Cingular, so most of my calls will be free.

So it was off to Best Buy, land of free Cingular phones.

After five hours of online comparison and then much in-store debate, I chose a really high-end phone and even that phone was free with service at Best Buy. Good old Best Buy.

The woman didn't want anything to do with me. She hated her job, her life, her underwear--something. But still, she stomped off to get my phone.

When she returned, there it was! A phone! And I was only a series of computer forms away from having it.

First question--

What zip code will this phone primarily be used from?

ME: Does that determine the area code of the phone number?

GIRL THAT HATES ME,LIFE: Yes.

ME: Then it will be 3-2-8--

She slams the phone's box down on the keyboard and says, "I can't sell you this phone then." And she looked so damn happy.

Best Buy can't sell out of region service and a Connecticut area code in Florida is evil when it's my primary phone. So I've been thwarted once again!

Next stop: Amazon.com. I've purchased a phone and a service agreement, but they don't ship until and "reserve the right to cancel my order upon results of the credit check."

So I'm guessing I still don't have a phone.

When I hear back from Amazon, I'll probably just have to bend over and take it from the Cingular store, deposits and all.

In other news, tomorrow is a Wednesday and I should have written a story today instead of clawing my way through cell phone hell.

CHRISTIAN: I would like to add a new phone to my parents' family plan.

SPRINT: Allrighty, I'll have that up and going for you in no time... just let me punch a few things into the computer. Oh.

CHRISTIAN: Yes?

SPRINT: The computer is telling me that you can't.

CHRISTIAN: Can't?

SPRINT: Yes. It says that the maximum numbers allowed for the account are two and that they are already in use.

CHRISTIAN: There's a limit of two phones on your family plan?

SPRINT: Well, it says that your deposit is only in the amount of $250, and each phone requires a $125 deposit... so that's two.

CHRISTIAN: Okay, so I'll add another $125 to the deposit.

SPRINT: You can't.

CHRISTIAN: I can't?

SPRINT: According to the computer, you can't have more than two phones because of the credit check.

CHRISTIAN: But we've been with you for nearly two years!

SPRINT: I understand.

CHRISTIAN: What I don't understand is, we have a deposit of $250 on file with you and if we use our phones over our plan and all the way up to $250, you shut the phones off immediately, don't you?

SPRINT: Yes.

CHRISTIAN: So how could we possibly use the phones negligently, even if we wanted to? And how come I can't raise the amount of that deposit, just to show you that I'm serious?

SPRINT: The only thing you can do is create your own account with us.

CHRISTIAN: And pay an even bigger deposit than $125 and more and more money a month?

SPRINT: Not necessarily... the deposit would be based on your credit.

CHRISTIAN: Of which I have none established.

SPRINT: We do have a plan at only $35 a month for 300 minutes.

CHRISTIAN: But to add another phone to my parents plan is only $25 a month, plus $5 phone insurance. Your $35 plan, plus $5 in taxes and fees, plus $5 for the phone insurance, plus $5 for free Sprint to Sprint calling to call my parents would bring that up to $50 a month, for only 300 minutes! My parents are already paying the taxes, the Sprint to Sprint fee and they're always left with 750 minutes of their plan that they do not use each and every month!

SPRINT: Maybe you'd like to give it a try?

CHRISTIAN: If I wanted my own service, I would've signed up with Cingular because I would get free calling to all of my friends. I don't even like Sprint. Nobody uses Sprint. I was just doing this because it was my parent's family plan.

SPRINT: I'm sorry.

CHRISTIAN: So what do I do with this $250 paperweight that I am holding? That I was told I had to purchase before I could ADD A PHONE to my parent's service?

SPRINT: You can set up your own service with us, or you can return it.

CHRISTIAN: I'll have to return it and go to Cingular, thank you.

CALL #2

::I explain my situation to a different representative::

SPRINT: I don't see why you couldn't add an additional deposit to add an additional phone!

CHRISTIAN: Ahh! Thank you!

SPRINT: Let me just transfer you over to the billing department.

::click, dialing... no service, because I'm calling on my new paperweight that insisted that I dial *2 to set the phone up for the first time... apparently I was transferred to a number that was not recognized as a free Sprint call.::

CALL #3...

(Now on the land-line.)

...was exactly the same as the first call, sentences always starting with "Well, the computer is telling me..."

ME: A representative just told me that it could be done! That I could pay an extra deposit to add my phone.

SPRINT: Who would tell you that?

I wanted to smash my phone into pieces. I still do. This phone is great. Sprint is not. If I am forced to sign up on my own plan, so be it--but it certainly won't be with Sprint.

The man that sold me the phone at Radioshack, he was awesome. Didn't try to sell me on a plan or anything. Now I'll probably have to go return it to him like a jackass.

But first, my father is going to call and threaten to cancel his account with Sprint.

Elise asked me if we should sign up for Netflix in Florida. I answered with a resounding, "NO WAY."

I love Netflix, but I hate it. I feel obligated to it. Obligated by the money it skims off your bank account monthly.

Everything wants to skim money off of our bank accounts. This blog skims money off of my bank account. ($8 a month.)

Real Networks has their RealONE Superpass and for only $12.99 a month, you can watch what's happening inside the Big Brother house live, 24/7. We signed up for a fourteen day, free trial, because, why not? The video stutters all over the place. It tries, tries, tries to catch up with the audio. My cable modem is blazing fast elsewhere, downloads a song from iTunes in one second, but Real's "Super"pass is agony. Their content, aside from Big Brother, which is ending in a month, is practically non-existent. Who pays for this stuff? We cancelled before our trial ran out, of course. Of course you can sign up for this over the internet and it's all automated and beautiful, but cancelling the same subscription puts you on your telephone--on hold. This is all so they can skim that $12.99 off your bank account. So low you won't bother to cancel! In the end, they refused to let us cancel; gave us a free month instead.

This is something I've learned... if you have a subscription to something, cancel it. No one wants to lose you and your bank account, even if they've yet to even touch your bank account. They have nothing to lose, to offer you something more for nothing. I had a free month of AOL and I had to actually cancel it through the mail! But then they came back with three more free months. I declined. I don't know why I took the first free month in the first place. I think they offered twenty free iTunes-like downloads or something.

Netflix has been lowering their price for me in annoying emails ever since we cancelled.

I can't wait to call the cable company for my new apartment. They say one word about a deposit, about installation costs and I'll say the magic words: "I'm going to look into DirecTV." Because we all know that they have the power to waive that stuff.

Just like every apartment complex has the power to give you a free month's rent. They raised my deposit by $600, but that's okay because... all of October is free.

Elise's father just bought her a brand new computer and it's better than mine! A second cable modem is an extra $50 a month. Tomorrow, I'll be buying a $150 wireless network instead. It will save me $600 this year alone.

The cell phone is the worst. (Save a car, but I don't want to think about that at this exact moment.) I don't even want a cell phone, but it's decidedly important that I have one. Why? Because, like all of these other services, it was invented and now we need it. (My Tivo-like DVR service offered by the cable company will only skim $7 a month! Of everything, it's the one that's truly worth it.) If Elise is at work and I'm at work and I'm off early and I need to call her because I don't have a car, because a car payment is $250 a month and insurance is $200 and gas is expensive, I'll need to call her. I'll need a cell phone. If I have to fly back to Connecticut for a weekend for a television shoot and I'm right in the middle of selling my new book, I'll NEED a cell phone. Otherwise, I don't want a cell phone.

Thankfully, my parents will add me onto their plan and it will only skim $20 more dollars a month off of their bank account. But first I'll need my own phone, and though we'll be paying an extra $20 a month, there will be no deal on one. I need to buy a cell phone, full price.

Cell phones are $200? Really? I don't mind paying that, but Sprint's phones are about as cheap as the candy filled plastic cell phones with electronic beeping sounds that they sell to children to make them grow up and feel they need a cell phone. Between the two Sprint Samsung phones in this house, I think there have been four replacements. They've used up all of their insurance! And only once was it because my father accidentally dropped it into his cup of coffee. The battery life on all four of these phones that we've had have been absolutely terrible. When Elise was living in Florida, I spent every night running through that battery with her and every night it did go dead.

Today, both of the phones in this house, having already been replaced once, are royally fucked up. You pull the antenna out of one and it comes all the way out--into your hand. The other, just doesn't work half of the time. Gets no service, where the other phone of the same model is getting plenty.

And this is what I can get for $200. A Cracker Jack toy cell phone. Bastards. I'll barely use it and it'll break and I won't have any insurance because it's not my plan and I'll be out another $200.

Maybe if they didn't give these phones away with every plan (so much so that I spent an hour looking for a place online to even buy a phone full price, without a plan) maybe if they were always $200 and not just $200 to make you sign a contract or longer contract to get it free, maybe then they would WORK.

One day I'll be in the hospital and I'll need an artificial hip or something and I'll have to say, "No. I can't afford it." They'll say, "But you'll never walk again."

"But, you see. I've replaced my cell phone twenty-six times in the past twenty years. Oh, and I called to cancel that damn RealONE Superpass but they gave me a free month and I wasn't even using it anymore and I totally forgot and it's been draining my bank account for as long as I've been alive!"

The details of the move down to Florida are getting more and more complicated. I will be renting a local U-Haul here in Connecticut and using it to transport all of my stuff twenty miles north to Stratford, where the stuff will then be loaded onto the front of a commercial semi to make it's way down to Florida. Two weeks from tomorrow, Elise and I are leaving. Once in Florida, we'll be renting ANOTHER local U-Haul to pick up our stuff at the truck depot.

The stuff will probably arrive early, because I have to have it trucked a full seven days before our original move-in date, due to the stupid Labor Day weekend.

Because of this, I called the apartment complex or private residencies complex or condominiums or whatever they are and tried to weasel my way in at an earlier date.

She pushed it to 5pm on the 9th, which is better than the 10th at least. Then she explained why she couldn't do better than that.

You see, they're installing all new appliances in our kitchen. STAINLESS STEEL appliances. Brand new, stainless steel stove, fridge and microwave.

So who can argue with that? I couldn't be happier. Except... if that isn't the kiss of condo death, I don't know what is. You don't replace everything in the kitchen with stainless steel when you have a tenant excited, ready and willing to move in and start paying you for what is already there. You replace that shit to SELL the place.

I'm going to enjoy my year while it lasts and if I really do love this place, I'm going to try my best to pressure them into another lease, but who knows?

The website for the sale of these condos just added a page for reserving a unit. You can see detail on every single unit in the place, including mine. All of the ones in my building are marked "reserved", save one that is available and another--MINE--that says, "Event Registration"-----

I tried to write them an anonymous question on their contact form, as to what that means, but their site doesn't work--which is a good thing. To me, EVENT REGISTRATION means an open house where prospective buyers come to see the place first hand at... an event! When would such an event happen? Perhaps in the nine vacant days that this apartment needs to install three kitchen appliances. Wouldn't surprise me. There is only one other apartment in my building with the same asking price, the highest asking price. What I'm saying is... my apartment is the one to show off.

And according to the site--it's selling for $273,500. For a one bedroom apartment! At least that will keep buyers away! No wonder they're wheeling in the steel. With no down payment and a seven percent interest rate, a thirty year mortgage on my 1 bedroom apartment will run $1819 a month. I'm paying $890 to rent the damn place.

So, yes, I'll enjoy this next year very, very much. Then, maybe the year after. Either that or I'll be living in a hot air balloon dropping darts onto the management's heads.

I am tired.

We did a healthy eating cooking class for children at Wild Oats today (where Elise works for five more days) and a whole bunch of people showed up. They kind of cycled through for two hours, eating food and having books signed.

There was a guy wearing a shirt that said, "Just Say NO to Corn Syrup." I should've taken a picture of that, but I hate my camera and these are the only three pictures that even sort of came out.

Phew! I actually got them before it was too late. "Limited Edition" cotton swabs!

Unbelievable. The lowest price quote I can get on the smallest (1 bedroom, studio apartment) moving truck for a one way trip to Florida is over $1600, not including your own gas expenses. Mileage over the exact miles from here to there runs an extra fifty cents a mile. Every time you stop off for gas, food, motel... when you pick up the truck, return the truck... that's all fifty cents a mile.

Gas would probably run anywhere from $300 to who knows what for 1200 miles in a truck.

Then I have to buy Anthony a returning flight to Connecticut for driving the truck down with us.

I'll go ahead and estimate that all of that combined will run $2200. To move my shit myself. $2200. Ridiculous, I say. This is U-Haul I'm talking about!

Add to the $2400, gas for Elise's car and food and motel and your head combusts.

I'm looking into having the stuff loaded into the front of a commercial semi now. All told, they'll deliver it and everything for less than a thousand. NO GAS COSTS.

I've never even heard of that before. Though my IKEA furniture might be in the company of cases and cases of cabbage or something.

They're larger than my thumb and they fly. One tried to fly in my face today. Enough said.

Update: They're fucking cicadas! And to think, I joked about the swarms that were attacking parts of the country last year. Karma.

Fresh off the heels of Ryan flying all the way from Florida to participate in the recording of a commentary for a new DVD of our second movie, The Robert Cake--a DVD that would feature improved video and audio quality--the hard drive containing the movie has smoked itself out of this world. That's right, Anthony plugged the external drive in, smelled smoke and then it was gone. Forever.

A moment of silence.

Nothing short of an extremely costly data recovery service can bring the final render of our movie back from the dead.

What we're left with now is,

1. The compiled DVD of the movie that we already have and have had for years, but it cannot be changed in any way, just burned into more of the same old DVD. (So, atleast the movies still EXISTS.)

2. The digitized original takes of every shot in the movie, that could be used to re-edit the film from the ground up, BUT there would be no humanly way that every single cut would be exactly as it was in the original version and impossible to do without resisting vast improvements over the original... both things adding up to a movie that does not sync with our newly recorded commentary--or many songs in the movie's score for that matter!

So, for now... let's all move on with our lives.

Barnes and Noble,

If I wanted people to pop up in front of my face and talk to me in full fluid motion, I'd go to one of your actual bookstores. At least Microsoft Word's "Clippy" doesn't talk, as annoying as he is. Some people are running a cord from their computer to their stereo, so that they can listen to all of their albums in iTunes and someone was listening to Sufjan Stevens when your stupid woman started talking over it.

How dare you.

Now, Now is Really Now is now up at the redesigned Ribcage site.

I believe it is the second longest story in the series so far. Even after yesterday's all day bonanza of site redesign and today's complete and utter dread of having to sit back down at the computer and write something outside of CSS code.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Ribcage is now fully functional in Movable Type and it only killed my soul to do it!

I do think it's far easier to navigate though.

A few notes:

All comments are lost, but maybe I'll transfer them over by hand.
And the site looks stupid in Internet Explorer... when compared to Firefox.

www.ribcage.org is now a straightforward redirect to the site's location on my server. The site runs smoother this way.

Now, all I have to do is write tomorrow's friggin' story.

I can't help myself when it comes to this geeky crap. I have Movable Type and I'm going to use it! Right now, I'm transferring Ribcage to my server. Rebuilding the entire site in MT and making everything automated. In the past, updating Ribcage has been a huge hassle where I have to update four different pages, just to post a new story. Now, it will be as simple as a blog post. I've also taken this time to go back and remake the image files of the old stories, which were in a different, horribly blurry, bold font that no one could read. Hooray for continuity. This took me forever, but the site should be slick and beautiful and hopefully finished for this Wednesday's story.

So now that this last week's story has settled...

In March... New Puppy Story was written with blatant foreshadowing to this week's story. That their "family is too small" and the quick bond between the little girl and Emily.

In He Who Shall Remain Nameless, "All of Emily's favorite names are locked away, reserved for our future children."

Ribcage Pt. II is obviously when it happened.

Then Needles, This Cardboard Monster and We Can Forget About the Adobe are all the early effects coming on.

I've had this planned for some time and it's been a blast so far... like writing a television drama--spending weeks and weeks to put the pieces into place. Right down to building up their move to Florida, only to come out of left field.

Speaking of Florida, in real life, where real people are certainly NOT pregnant... Elise and I are leaving Connecticut in only three weeks.

This will probably sink in tomorrow, when all of our furniture arrives and I have to cordon off a section of the dining room to stash it until we move. This will be visual proof: our stacks of unassembled furniture.

I myself feel very unassembled at the moment. Living out of boxes for weeks and weeks. Cycling between the same five shirts because I seemed to have packed the rest of my good clothes under sweaters and ten pairs of pants.

Today, we sat around and watched five episodes of The Mole on DVD. The best reality show of all time and they put it on DVD for Elise to experience for the first time. I picked the three disc set up for nine dollars, used and it was money WELL spent.

Though, we need to get out of the house and say our goodbyes to Connecticut. Corinne says she'll give us her tour. She'll take us to thrift store to find interesting dishware from the estates of the dead. And maybe she'll show us her deer. Her dead deer that she found, that she photographs and that she desperately wants the head of. She's awesome.

I sent a copy of the Ribcage book to my editor at Simon and Schuster and she wrote back...

Thanks for the copy of RIBCAGE! What a great-looking book - I look forward to reading it. Best of luck with it!

She's awesome. Especially now that work on the Eating Stella Style book is basically done. All that's left are the galleys and with those it's mainly just looking out for typos.

By my count, there are fourteen copies of Ribcage in print now. At first, I knew everyone that was buying the book on a personal level, but I've sold several copies in the last week that were to who knows who. That is a cool feeling. Especially when 95% of the material in the book is available for free online.

Funny, those few copies of Ribcage are more exciting to me than the thousands of copies Eating Stella Style will sell weekly for at least the first year.

The thing about Eating Stella Style is that my name is on the title page and I am sure that this blog will explode upon its release. People will discover my fiction--my baby. Then that other baby, the big heavy baby that's months past due--my nonfiction book, memoir, autobiography, un-diet book or whatever you want to call it. Call it what you must, because I certainly don't have a title yet! Still.

The prologue was written in April of 2004! Before Ribcage even existed, before I had any piece of writing that I let anybody read. Of course, there was Leaving Jupiter--the secret, cringeworthy novel that it is. Leaving Jupiter--it went something like this...

Luke, he’s pointing. He says, “What’s with the scary horse head?”

“That’s Lucky… town horse… he got loose… drowned to death in Carl’s swimming pool. He’s sort of a local legend. Lucky, not Carl. That’s Carl.” She points the fork at the man with the soup.

Carl waves his arm into the air and says, “You telling those boys about Lucky?”

“You know I’m telling them about Lucky you old coot.”

Carl turns his chair around to face us. He says, “Don’t listen to her. She lies. I never pushed a horse… didn’t push Lucky.”

Still, I want to self-publish the heavy baby, nonfiction enigma by Christmas. Pay some of my new bills, while getting the damn thing out and into people's hands. Pursue traditional publishers while still getting the damn thing to the people that have been waiting to read it.

Though, it still needs a great deal of retooling, rewriting and just plain writing. It's still a good 20,000 words short of any decent mark.

There is a new story over at Ribcage today.

Even After She Ruins the Ending

A very important story. One that I would suggest people go back to the last four stories for a second read afterward. Such restraint I had! Knowing all along that this was coming!

Important to note: Ribcage is a work of fiction. Emily and Elise share much in common, but certainly not THIS.

Hello everyone.

Obviously this blog is up and running and the old blog is dead, and boy am I glad about that.

There are many changes to come to this site, the biggest being an integration into a full blown website that should be happening in the next few weeks. Nothing obtrusive or anything, just a tiny menu bar that will appear in the black space above the title banner of the blog. (Which will always be the main page and main focus of this site.) I wanted a place to keep a bio page and a page dedicated to my writing and what not... with Movable Type I can merge those into the blog, so here I am. Only none of those extra bells and whistles exist just yet!

Also, the left sidebar is still unfinished and emptyish. The FlickR random photo popups seem to only load half of the time. This makes me angry.

The new title... the new title is something I'll have to bring up on the yet to be created FAQ page. Jeremy commented that I was getting a bit pretentious when he saw the title. He said, "What does that even mean?" I don't know what the hell it means, really. I didn't come up with it!

The title comes from a message board thread about my family that I found on Google. You can read the entire thread here. (The relevant stuff starts on the third post.) It is the single funniest thing I've read in regards to my father's television show.

I want to put a transcript of it in my book, it's so funny. These people are so critical of us, yet they have really nice things to say at the same time. That thread is a rollercoaster and I love it.

For those that don't feel like sorting through the thread to find the good stuff, I'll reprint some of it below...

-I've discovered George Stella from "Low Carb & Lovin' It" on the food network channel, and I bought his recipe book.

-I TIVO that show, but the man scares me.

-That's because he *is* scary . . . and his wife and kids seem like robots instead of real people. The show does have great meal ideas tho, and I've cooked a couple of them for my roommates and sig. other.

-Hmm, why is he scary to you guys? His son Christian is cute. They probably seem like robots because they aren't actors, and maybe they're a little nervous about being on TV.

-It's not a robotic thing for me, it's quite the opposite. His personality is still that of the jovial-yet-insecure "fat guy", yet his body is not. There's an incongruity there that's quite dissonant to me.

-Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. He does annoy me sometimes. But I love his recipes!

-***** is probably right, his wife and kids are probably just nervous about being on TV, but that results in the robotic-like behavior that I perceive. (His son is cute!)

Paul Paddock did the artwork for The Honorary Title's album cover, but more of his stuff is online here.

Do you know how long it took me to figure out the Tandy 1000 home computer? Years. Do you know how long it took me to figure out the old Macs they used in school? To figure out just what I was supposed to do on Prodigy? Then Windows 95 came along and AOL and all of that crap I had to figure out. A few years later I was going to AOL keyword "My FTP Space" and I felt like I was a genius. Frontpage and I, we're just starting to get along. Blogger templates are easy as pie.

Now, it's the CGI, CSS, PHP, MySQL where I start to get hazy. There's no room in my head for this stuff after years of tinkering around with every new thing that came along.

Still, Movable Type templates aren't easy to come by and far from what I want, so I'll just have to figure this stuff out.

christianstella.com is up and running, but don't expect an actual launch for at least a week. What's there now is the bare bones of a blog. I will say though, today I sucessfully made the blog three columns AND imported all 802 of the blog posts on this blog. All of my comments are lost in the switch, but they'll always be here in Blogger hell, if anyone would ever care. Also, the post titles are merely the first 5 words of each post, which almost never gives any clue to what the post is about... but is just a LITTLE bit easier than going through and updating 802 posts by hand.

For the first time in over a year, the first page of my archives isn't plagued with strange symbols throughout the text. So, thanks to Movable Type on that. And the little search box actually searches, something I've found Blogger's to never do.

The title of the new blog... well that's something I'll have to explain when the site actually goes live.

Elise's new painting.