Self-Publishing for Dummies by Jason R Rich is exactly what you expect, and what I really like about the “Dummies” line of books. They really aren’t written for dummies at all. But they don’t presume any previous knowledge of the subject, and explain all concepts and terms so everyone can understand them.

That said, Self-Publishing For Dummies isn’t going to be enough for you to get your Self-Publishing business off the ground. It’s enough of an overview to teach you what you *don’t* know, and point out some resources to fill in the gaps in your subject knowledge. There are different methods of self-publishing, just as there are many different methods of running your own business (and honestly,  self-publishing is running your own business.)  This book shows you much of what you are in for if you want to go the self-published route, but you’re going to need more specific texts and advice if you actually decide to go forward with self-publishing.

I’d recommend this book as the first (of many) books to read on the subject of Self Publishing.

-Z

Man, do I ever feel bad. Wish somebody woulda told me this when I was 12…

God Kills Kittens

Blog on,
-CZ

I got a letter from the Government the other day. Opened it and read it. It said they were suckers.

It stated that the top secret, classified file they keep on me has been stolen. Apparently, I am not to worry that my name, SSN, birthdate, and several risque pictures of me have been compromised.

The reason I am not to worry is that “No evidence of illegal use of your information has been found.”

Whew! Thank goodness! Fortunately, I have a plan for dealing with someone who tries to steal my identity.

I’m going to let them have it.

The nanosecond someone pretends to be me, I am GONE, and let’s see them try to dodge the MN Dept of Corrections, my Parole Officer, my Psychoanalyst, my Bookie, the Child Support Collections Office, the IRS, and…

…my Student Loan Officer. Holy shit is she mean.

Not to mention I owe Satan a favor or two.

So I almost feel sorry for the son-of-a-bitch who tries to open an account in my name.

Meanwhile, I have a new life all mapped out, on a Pimento farm in California (the side that IS NOT going to fall into the ocean any day now…) I’ll get some cornrows, change my name to Iggy, and wear sandals and clothing made from hemp.

Blog on,
-CZ

Every now and then, I look to see how the MyLifeBits project is progressing. The goal of the project is for people to be able to record every aspect of their lives to searchable computer files. Every piece of paper you handle, bills, cards, junk mail. Every e-mail. Every phone conversation. Every blog post. Every photo, movie and song. Everything. Even to the point of having video and audio recordings of your daily life stored to terabytes of hard drive space. Your entire life, digitized, tagged, indexed, and archived forever.

Why? Probably because we can. The technology is there, and space is cheap. The limiting factors are having the ability to search such a large quantity of data, and eventual obsolescence of data formats. Just you try to open that old Amiga text file now, you know, the one on the 5.25 floppy disk! It is estimated that data becomes obsolete after about ten years, and that is if you pick your formats carefully. Otherwise, you need to continually convert your data to the latest/greatest format.

Make all the Big Brother jokes you like, but if this technology takes off, it could change personal and social relations Significantly. Imagine these scenarios:

An officer arrives on the scene of an accident, and the five or six people each whip out their pocket pc and playback the audio/video of the events leading up to the accident from their own perspectives.

Instead of saying “I told you so!” or “I never said that!” you could play back the conversation.

Ask your computer “What was that red wine I had on vacation in Chile six years ago?” or “What was my favorite song in 1999?”

Best of all, when you die, hand off the data to your heirs. then they can see what kind of person you really were…

Blog on,
-CZ

Whilst doing research for The Demonslayer’s Handbook, I came across the site godchecker.com, which really does a fantastic job of addressing the demons and deities from many a mythos and pantheon (When have you ever seen a listing of Austrailian Deities?)

I spent way too much time here, looking for names of Elemental Deities, which will appear as characters in the DSH.

Egypt was right out, because it is so overused.

I was initially tempted by the Sumerian pantheon. It is the oldest documented religion known to man, and it has some of the coolest names. Lovecraft really made use of Sumerian deities throughout his writings.

I finally decided on the Aztec lineage, mostly based on the fact that they were well-versed in human sacrifice, and not quite as popular as the others. (When was the last time QUETZALCOATL made the news?)

Blog on,
-CZ

Jade Walker sounds like my kinda person. According to her website, she’s “…a journalist, a Web producer, an obituarist, a romantic, a foodie, a poet, a witch, a vampire and a cat lover”

Jade also created The Blog of Death in June 2003. What do you suppose it’s about?

From the aboutus.org listing:

The Blog of Death is a frequently-updated Weblog highlighting obituaries of the famous, infamous and interesting unknowns.

The site also has links to Obituary listings of major publications. You can subscribe to the Blog of Death RSS Feed [Jan 2010 Update: Check the Twitter Feed ] and be the first to know about the latest bucket-kickers, and keep your Dead Pool up to date.

Far from bitter jesting about the latest celebs who bit the dust, The Blog of Death focuses on people who made a difference in the world, no matter how small.

My new year’s resolution for 2005 is to live a life worthy of listing on the Blog of Death when I die in a fiery crash. File me under “interesting unknown.”

Die on,
-Z

If you haven’t heard of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, then, well…, hmm. I guess I can’t really mock you. I mean, they’re from Canada, after all.

If you want to know why you SHOULD know about them, check out this video of Keep Your Parents Off The Net:

There’s plenty more where that came from, check youtube, last.fm or your media website of choice. Just make sure to check out The Lost Scrolls of Frosty:

These incredible scrolls were discovered in a snow bank by Joe Bird on his fifteenth attempt to reach the North Pole.

WARNING: The Lost Scrolls of Frosty contains concepts and theology that may exist outside of your comfort zone. If you’re worried at all, you probably shouldn’t subject your fragile belief system to the revolutionary words herein. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Listen to them in order, and pass them around. They’re as funny as Canadians can be, and they’re FREE fer crissakes…

Nog on,
-Z

From now on, call me Beautiful Disgrace. That’s the new goth name bestowed on me by the online Gothic Name Generator. Just for fun, I tried a couple other names to see how they gothed out:

• My Father: Demonic Angel
• My Mom (Maiden name): Latex Freak
• My Cat: Bitter Beauty
• My Boss: Angeldust
• My Friends: Beautiful Scars, Beautifully Decayed, and Kittie Corpse

The rest came back too disturbing to mention (To me, not to you.) Check yours out, and let me know if you get any good ones.

Goth on,
-BD

Alright, I’ll admit it. I would pay the cost of a movie ticket just to watch Halle Berry put away her groceries. So it was a safe bet that I would line up at the theater to see Catwoman.

Alright, I’ll admit it. The movie was bad. At best. I went in hoping for good and expecting fair, and I was still disappointed. [Editor's Update Mar 2007: Catwoman ended up on the 2007 'worst 100 reviewed movies list' at rottentomatoes.com]

Catwoman trying to pick up a good movie on her head-mounted Dish Network Transciever

I was disappointed in the silly head-mounted satellite dish they made her wear. Just a pair of ears would have been fine. (Think “Josie and the Pussycats” movie.)

The plot was one of the movie’s many weak points. Even for a comic-book plot, this is pretty bad. The unnecessary genesis of the Catwoman character was cheesy and distracted me from the real plot, if there was one. I thought Hollywood would have learned that the superhero/villian genesis is not some magical “Story” all by itself, it has to have meaning in the context of SOME BIGGER PLOT. Watch “Batman Begins” to see what I mean.

But hey, any day now, that writer’s strike in Hollywood will be over… you know, the one that started in the ’60s?

The villain (played by Sharon Stone) really wasn’t so much of a villain and more of your classic rich-bitch. And really, the “super” power? Come on. It would have been far superior to have her turn into the supervillain Clayface.

Visually, the movie was OK. The sets were fine. I liked the cameras moving through the sets, and the transitions from C.G. to real life were imperceptible.

The script was a turd, but it pains me to point out that what really landed this movie in the litterbox was the acting of Halle Berry. I thought she could carry the movie no matter how bad the script was, but I was wrong. I kinda wish it was just Halle Berry putting away the groceries. That might have been better.

L8R,
-Z

This Wonderful Life by Liam Kemp is a masterpiece of animation on so many levels. Technically, he’s done an amazing job with a limited amount of hardware. Years from now, people will wonder how he was ever able to complete this in the year 2002 with such hardware:

Athlon 600mhz, 32mb GeForce, 768mb RAM — UPGRADE: Athlon 1.4ghz, 64mb GeForce MX, 1.5gb RAM

Visually, the story is stunning. The cinematography, focus, depth, picture composition, light and shadow… I could go on.

Emotionally, his heroine does more in these short movies than most actors pull off in their entire careers.

I won’t pretend to understand the story, but prepare to have your emotions run through a workout.

This Wonderful Life -Part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em3NmxUQI-0

This Wonderful Life – Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI8zXqM3duY&NR=1

Someone please give this man a movie contract.

Blog on,
-Z