Lately, in these long (too long) stretches between posts, I’ve been doing a lot of everything and not enough of anything. I’m writing, as always, but with the closing date for our new house looming closer with every day, I find myself spending far too much time on the phone hassling mortgage brokers and insurance agents. I hate doing it, but the rush I get from successfully negotiating a bank fee should be outlawed.

I’ve received some interesting mail, lately. Yesterday, I opened the mailbox to find a copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a wonderfully alive and detailed reference tome that is as pleasurable as it is useful. I picked it up for what amounted to be a nominal shipping and handling fee, and think it is the perfect addition for my steadily-growing reference collection.

That was yesterday. The mail today was even more exciting. There is a perfectly whimsical online comic called Minus, that ran from February 2006 to July 2008 when the artist, Ryan Armand, abandoned it to move on to other projects. The strip was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2007, and even in its dormancy remains one of the best web-only comics on the tubes.

Minus, the title character, is the name of a little girl who possesses nearly god-like powers that allow her to turn anything she imagines into reality. The intrigue of the comic lies in Minus’ inability to understand the significance of the worlds she creates. There are runs of several strips that follow Minus as she constructs beautifully nuanced universes, complete with their own inhabitants, governments and landscapes–only to destroy them on a whim. The strip is touching, clever, unexpected, and often beautiful.

My exciting mail day came when I found a poster-tube leaning against the inside of my door. I’d ordered a print of a particularly impressive Minus strip, and had forgotten about it until then. Inside the tube I found a full-sized reproduction, signed by the artist. It was cause for celebration, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t expect. The surprise came when from inside the reproduction fell an 8.5×11 piece of printer paper with an original drawing that Armand made just for me. The drawing was of his heroine floating away on the string of a balloon–a reference to another one of his comics I mentioned I liked. On the back of the paper was a scribbled message from the artist.

If I get anywhere near my scanner in the near future, I’ll post a scan of the original piece. Until then, happy hunting. And take a look through Armand’s other strips if you have the time. They’re worth it.

I’ve been working diligently on my own writing to fill the void, and I’m very near completing the second draft of Charlie. A lot has changed since Charlie was in his infancy, but the spirit of the book remains in tact. I think after I polish the last 50 pages or so I’ll be left with something crisper and cleaner that will be ready to withstand the scrutiny of the publishing world.

This is a brief post after a long lull, I know, but I’ll leave you with the following nugget:

Before William Faulker published his first novel, he was the post master of his college town. As a postmaster he was notoriously fickle, opening the office on days it suited him, closing it on days it didn’t. He acted as jazz-era spam filter. He threw out catalogues and other bulk mailings, and kept the magazines he liked to read.

When it became apparent that his days at the post office were numbered, Faulker decided to beat his bosses to the punch and submitted this–one of his finest pieces of writing in my opinion. Enjoy.

“As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.”

If you’ve done any poking around the site you may have noticed a semi-broken link to the “Crosswords” writing samples page. I say semi-broken because the link is functional, but it only brings you to a site that says, more or less, that crosswords are coming soon.

With my recent acquisition of Crossword Compiler, that soon may be sooner than I’d hoped. I haven’t studied the ins and outs of the product just yet, but it promised to help me along in my crossword writing quest. I’m very wary of software that promises to help make people better writers. I’m not a technophobe…I’m particularly enthusiastic about books or audiotapes or videos that promise to make people better writers either. I believe–and I think that any good writer will agree–that the only way to become a better writer is to write. Or maybe read. But definitely, definitely write.

It’s true for fiction, it’s true for journalism, so I can’t think of a single reason it would be different for crosswords. I will say, though, that Crossword Compiler comes with a nifty set of dictionaries and word lookups that I expect will be handy in a pickle.

This program also gives me the ability to save crosswords in an online-publishable format. This means, that with the right software, I’ll not only be able to publish my puzzles in a nice-looking fashion–I’ll be able to publish them in a nice-looking and playable fashion, which should spice things up over at the Writing Samples page.

At any rate, I still need to figure out how to do it, so if you have any suggestions contact me.

Very, very short post today as it’s Meghan’s day off and we have plans to look at a house.

I’ve been wary about home shopping, thinking there is no way we can afford it, but we found a darling little house in our area listed for about $60,000. To me, this seems suspiciously cheap, but the market is weak, interest rates are scraping the bottom of the barrell, and the $8,000 tax credit is very appealing.

With enough saved up for a healthy down-payment, our morgage plus taxes will literally be cheaper than paying rent.

We’re meeting with a loan officer later today to see where we stand. With all of our house-buying knowledge coming from late-night episodes on HGTV, we’re only textbook smart on the subject, and I’m a little nervous for the practical exam.

It doesn’t help that I’m much better at pounding on a keyboard than I am at pounding on a nail. Anything we get in this price range will require a lot of work. Meghan is excited. I’m scared.

I’ve started Twittering (Tweeting?), although I have to admit I’m not sure what the sense of it is. Right along with Facebook, I can’t help but feel this is an outlet that will end up working against my productivity rather than with it. I’ve seen countless articles and newscasts with flashy titles like “How Twitter can make you a better writer!” and “Twitter starts paying the bills!”, but I’m not buying it for a second.

It seems to me that the main problem facing a company that’s built around the question of “What are you doing?” is that, barring a few exceptions, nobody much cares what you’re doing. There is something disingenuous about the service, and while all online networking is hollow at the core, Twitter–with it’s 140 characters–is even hollower.

At any rate, I’ll be trying it on for a while. There are a couple of people that I enjoy following. Notably, realjohngreen (one of the beloved vlogbrothers) and, a first-rate Twitter celebrity and founder of Digg.com, kevinrose.

As always, here is a youtube video that sums up my feelings better than I can (courtesy of Kevin Rose’s via Twitter).

There’s the internet, I know, but the purist in me understands that only cheaters use Google to finish the Saturday puzzle. When it comes to writing and needing a quality thesaurus, yes, Microsoft Word has one built right in, but it’s limited and cumbersome, and I would just as soon find the perfect word in the perfect book.

The problem is that quality reference books are prohibitively–almost preposterously–expensive. Even shopping used on the internet, it’s difficult to find something that strikes the appropriate balance between quality and handsomenss, so I kept on limping along. I’d ask for these books every Christmas, but my family, knowing that no sane person would actually want books for Christmas–let alone reference books–forwent my request and instead purchased me clothing and razor blades.

Enter Half-Price Books. This story recently cropped up in a strip-mall in the Appleton area within a stone’s throw of a Barnes and Noble.

Thinking it was insane for a Mom & Pop shop to open so close to a B&N, I decided to stop in before the books were all hauled out and the store was replaced with a hair salon. I wanted to poke around a bit, and figured I might be able to get some tattered thesaurus on the cheap. I was amazed at what I found.

Impeccibly organized and impressively stocked, I found the reference area immediately, and instead of sorting through piles of torn paperbacks, I found myself staring at walls of brand-new, dirt cheap reference books. I left the store with three books after searching for about 10 minutes, but I could’ve spent hours there.

I wondered how a M&P shop got its hands on such a quality selection of books, but a little bit of digging found that Half-Price Books is a chain, or more likely a franchise, which means the store has buying power.

They purchase books from customers, as well. I tend to steer away from stores eager to buy goods from me, as they naturally don’t have my best interests in mind, but I look forward to seeing Half-Price books thrive.

I can’t provide anything close to a full review here, but suffice it to say I’ll be returning in the future.

If you don’t like sitting at the computer, I prefer to listen to them in the Podcast version.

This particular TED Talk, I should point out, isn’t indicative of most of them. Rives is a special case as he not a scientist, but a poet. He’s a TED favorite, and this short, short video will show you why. In a world saturated with unreal reality, where sitting infront of a television with your family is considered a real and worthwhile activity, Rives represents a dying breed of storyteller. Enjoy.

Apparently the problems I was having with Wordpress weren’t anything a fresh theme couldn’t handle. This is the Thesis theme, a premium theme offered by Chris Pearson (Cutline, Copyblogger…both clean and excellent themes that were just a bit over my head). If you ask me, this is one of the smartest themes on the market, and I’m itching to get after it. Once again, keep checking back for updates. I expect they will be aplenty.

Taking that sort of room to display the date this was posted when it could just as easily be accomplished under this post’s title…well, it’s inexcusable. While I’ve found appropriate lines to edit in my CSS code, even when I get rid of all of them the sidebar is still there, silently elbowing its way onto my page and throwing my entie post off-kilt.

If you have any suggestions for this please let me know. I’m quickly approaching the end of my wits.

Why does he refuse to accept the evolution of portable media players?

It rests on his knee, with a tightly-stretched power cord tethering it to a not-so-nearby power outlet practically screaming, “Hey! Eyes this way!.”

The size of the thing strikes me. It seems odd that something that can’t fit into a pocket was the latest rage in portable, but I suppose that might account for the bluejean styles of the decade.

There are explanations, of course. It’s possible he’s one of the 30 or so people under 25 that don’t own an ipod. It makes the ipod headphones he’s using difficult to explain…but still. He’s working in a steno notebook with various notes and measures scribled randomly on the pages, so it’s possible he’s a student, but I still don’t think that explains things.

If you have an explanation, let me know.