Indeed it's been a strange month. Being September, the declination of the warm weather (if you could call this summer we had warm at all) marks the beginning of autumn. I must admit I like the season: the turning of the leaves, everything smelling all pumpkin spicy, and of course the days leading up to Halloween, my second favorite Holiday. But it's been strange for other reasons as well. My family life has been a little bit of Hiroshima this month, but not anything I can't handle. And I received a big rejection this month. I'm a writer with elephant skin. I have a file full of rejections from 30 years of writing to prove it. Rejection is my steadfast companion. Oddly, this one is affecting me more than superficially meets the eye. Ah, but I'll get over it. Life is a gift and time is short. There's no sense in dwelling on it. Speaking of time, much of mine has been robbed this month by a sandbox game that I let pass by me when it came out in 2009 because I thought the game was one of those laughable games that only the people who play Farmville today would have played. As a matter of fact, though you've seen me on Steam it simply looked as if I was online, but not playing anything. Oh, but I was! (I was just too ashamed to add it as a non-Steam game. Heh.)
1. Shopping Cart Soldiers by John Mulligan
This is the most twisted book I've read since Clive Barker's Books of Blood about five years ago. I'm not even sure how to describe it. The story involves a young Scottish lad who emigrates to the States with his family, and is soon drafted into the US Army to go to Vietnam. The atrocities he partakes in while there leaves him a ruined man in so many ways. Not only is he a broken homeless man who sleeps on park benches and pushes a rusty shopping cart around looking for his next drink, he talks to himself and suffers visions of waking nightmares. And get this, the story is told by a lost soul misplaced by happenstance and looking for another body to inhabit. This soul has her eye on the hero of our tale, Finn MacDonald. His soul departed his body a long time ago and he's become an "empty" as it's called in the spirit world. She's doing her best to take residence within him. The book contains paragraphs and pages of MacDonald's dark visions right out of a modern H.P. Lovecraftian tale, and I probably should have passed on this book, truth be told, but I can't put it down now.
2. Breakfast at Tiffany's on Blu-Ray
Based on Truman Capote's small novel, this movie was my second exposure to Audrey Hepburn (I thought she was great in Roman Holiday, though the real star of that show was the mighty little Vespa that she and Gregory Peck tooled around on.) I'm not a fan of Blake Edwards, not from what I've seen of his stuff, but this movie wasn't bad. I'm not quite sure I see the "iconism" (is that even a word?) this movie has inferred upon a nation of cultists and purists, but the movie was fun to watch and it looks gorgeous on Blu-Ray.
3. Far Cry 3 on PC
Nope. I still haven't finished it. I'm wondering if I even will before the end of the year. So much for starting The Witcher 2 this year. I just killed Vaas, and so I'm told I still have a ways to go although my map is still dotted densely with relics, memory cards, lost letters and loot chests. I endured the fight with the giant ink demon, if you could call it a fight at all. It wasn't quite a QTE, but it was darn close. It was probably one of the easiest boss fights I've ever engaged in. Despite my grumblings, this is still one of the most amazing graphically games I've played. Each time I play still feels as if I've checked out of my life and ended up as a visiting guest on Ricardo Montalbon's mystical Fantasy Island.
4. Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) by Johnny Shaw on Kindle
Recommend to me by a friend at work I'm finding myself unable to not blaze through this. It's men's fiction at its best. Jimmy Veeder grew up in a small border town in Arizona. And the moment he could, got out of town as fast as he could and never looked back. And now it's twelve years later, and his father is dying. He has no choice but to come back. His father laid up in a nursing home that "smells like someone shampooed a three month dead cat," his father has one last request, a visit from a hooker. So, Jimmy accompanies his old high school friend, a Mexican looking Elvis Presley, who is now the town drunk to embark upon this quest. Shaw's descriptive passages are some of the most visceral stuff I've read as of late, "There is something about the desert that pisses everything off. It could be the heat, or the barren landscape or the stark desolation. . . . In the desert even the plants have chips on their shoulders. They are water starved and sunburnt fighters. . . .Even a desert hare will take a finger off the dumbass that tries to pet it. If a desert can make a bunny that angry, imagine what it does to people." Reading doesn't get more fun than this.
Recommend to me by a friend at work I'm finding myself unable to not blaze through this. It's men's fiction at its best. Jimmy Veeder grew up in a small border town in Arizona. And the moment he could, got out of town as fast as he could and never looked back. And now it's twelve years later, and his father is dying. He has no choice but to come back. His father laid up in a nursing home that "smells like someone shampooed a three month dead cat," his father has one last request, a visit from a hooker. So, Jimmy accompanies his old high school friend, a Mexican looking Elvis Presley, who is now the town drunk to embark upon this quest. Shaw's descriptive passages are some of the most visceral stuff I've read as of late, "There is something about the desert that pisses everything off. It could be the heat, or the barren landscape or the stark desolation. . . . In the desert even the plants have chips on their shoulders. They are water starved and sunburnt fighters. . . .Even a desert hare will take a finger off the dumbass that tries to pet it. If a desert can make a bunny that angry, imagine what it does to people." Reading doesn't get more fun than this.
5. Hell on Wheels: Season One on Netflix
Another recommendation by a friend at work, this is compelling entertainment. I'm pretty loyal to my favorite westerns, Tombstone, and The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. I never thought any western could touch these badboys. And then I got turned onto this rough and rugged series. It involves a veteran Confederate of the American Civil War who returns home to find his family farm ransacked, his wife hanged from the front porch and his son burned to ash. He seeks revenge on the band of Union soldiers who committed the act and discovers they migrated to the west to work on the newly christened Union Pacific railroad. The ex-rebel soldier, Cullen Bohannon, becomes a part of the railroad construction team in his search for the marauders he's seeking. This series bleeds authenticity, and is encouraging me to check out other series, like Deadwood in the future.
6. Train Simulator 2015 on PC
Steam released their latest iteration of DoveTail Games' famous railroad simulation. There are a multitude haters for this series (and the infamous Steam reviews to prove it) but this really is a great simulation for anybody who has even a small interest in trains and how railroads work. The core set game comes with a minimal amount of engines and track scenario courses, and should one choose to purchase additional scenarios the costs can add up very quickly. As I've mentioned before, owning every DLC available makes the game the most expensive PC game on the planet (about $2,000.) But I'm partial to freight train liveries and the big GP diesel electrics. I have no interest in 19th century steam locomotives or European passenger trains. Waiting for Steam sales and picking and choosing your tracks and engines can harvest a nice bounty of cheaply obtained entertainment. And then, of course, there are the Steam Achievements, which being TS2015 introduced an all new Train Simulator Academy with an accompanying achievement array for each level passed has made obtaining three dozen new achievements as easy as cheating.
7. Big Wreck Albatross on CD
Ian Thornley has been referred to as the Canadian version of Chris (Soundgarden, Audioslave) Cornell. It's easy to see why after giving this album a listen. Shoot, it's easy to see why after giving any Big Wreck album a listen. I stumbled upon these guys way back in 1997. Driving to my nightly mundane factory job in Austin, TX the local rock station shot out "That Song," for the masses. I was in love. I bought the CD the next day and never regretted it. It's rare that I buy a CD for one song exclusively. This album is filled with more of their usual golden goodness. This song, "Wolves," from the album is my favorite song. Give it a listen. I think you'll agree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zisyWP5U6Po
8. The Sims 3 on PC
Welcome to my dark and shameful secret of the month. I scored this along with a few DLCs on a recent Humble Bundle/Origin purchase. I quietly dismissed The Sims 3 key codes as something I'd keep in my library but something I'd never ever redeem. And then The Sims 4 released this month, and after reading so many reviews stating how much The Sims 3 was better I got to thinking, "Hey, I actually have that game!" So, now on the other side of over thirty hours of playing it, I'm a jetsetter bachelor juggling four girlfriends. I've penned a fiction novel and have a biography gaining popular momentum. I've done a cameo for an independent film, and I'm being recognized as a celebrity on the streets. I just hired a new maid, and through simple conversation discovered she had an evil trait. Sounds like my kind of gal, let the chase begin. Now I just need to buy a better shower, one that doesn't have me walking around smelling like a George Romero zombie the same day I take a shower.
Closing note of gratitude, and about that rejection I mentioned earlier.
I'd like to thank my cousin, Justin Rexroad for the tip concerning Picpick. I used this for my screen compilation this month. It cut my workload in half. I won't have to resort to breaking out my smartphone, my laptop, my Kindle AND my desktop to help bring in my Monthly Mixes in the future.
The rejection was for a job I applied for last month. The place is a local major employer that pays its employees sinful amounts of money, and I had a good feeling I would be considered. I got the rejection notification via US Mail this weekend, perhaps that's why I even mentioned it here. It's still quite the open blood fountain wound. There is good news, though. I can apply again next year. Yay! Will I? Hell no.
8. The Sims 3 on PC
Welcome to my dark and shameful secret of the month. I scored this along with a few DLCs on a recent Humble Bundle/Origin purchase. I quietly dismissed The Sims 3 key codes as something I'd keep in my library but something I'd never ever redeem. And then The Sims 4 released this month, and after reading so many reviews stating how much The Sims 3 was better I got to thinking, "Hey, I actually have that game!" So, now on the other side of over thirty hours of playing it, I'm a jetsetter bachelor juggling four girlfriends. I've penned a fiction novel and have a biography gaining popular momentum. I've done a cameo for an independent film, and I'm being recognized as a celebrity on the streets. I just hired a new maid, and through simple conversation discovered she had an evil trait. Sounds like my kind of gal, let the chase begin. Now I just need to buy a better shower, one that doesn't have me walking around smelling like a George Romero zombie the same day I take a shower.
Closing note of gratitude, and about that rejection I mentioned earlier.
I'd like to thank my cousin, Justin Rexroad for the tip concerning Picpick. I used this for my screen compilation this month. It cut my workload in half. I won't have to resort to breaking out my smartphone, my laptop, my Kindle AND my desktop to help bring in my Monthly Mixes in the future.
The rejection was for a job I applied for last month. The place is a local major employer that pays its employees sinful amounts of money, and I had a good feeling I would be considered. I got the rejection notification via US Mail this weekend, perhaps that's why I even mentioned it here. It's still quite the open blood fountain wound. There is good news, though. I can apply again next year. Yay! Will I? Hell no.
