Point of Man – Update


Geez, sorry I have not posted for quite some time. My mild-mannered alter ego, who is the director of a specialty research shop focused on China (an excellent secret identity), has been monopolizing an inordinate amount of my time. However, this is critical function as it provides income for all of life’s finer things, like a house and food. My good friend Bank of America appreciates my writing efforts but still strongly advises me to keep my day job. They cheerfully send me monthly encouragements requesting money.

Now that being said, Point of Man’s rough draft is about 50% complete. I am very happy with how it is progressing. I do need to stop killing people off though. Pope Bastion has the child. Gabe has had a terrible loss. Mize is out of jail and mucking things up. Dolan is doing, well, what Dolan does best, sending people to the next stage of existence. I have advised Dolan that there are decaffeinated coffee brands he should look into. I do know that there will now be a third book as well, unless I want this one to be about 1,000 pages, which I don’t. Already have the title – Cross of Man – and the plot line.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to embark on this journey with me. I truly appreciate it.

Cheers,

PW

Wait, what just happened?


I am a pretty simple guy. I go to work, dispense pearls of wisdom on my kids, procrastinate important tasks, and fall asleep watching Adult Swim just like everybody else. Yesterday, something jolted my relatively mundane lifestyle. So I wrote this book, Fabric of Man. I can’t really explained why. It just happened. Put the book on Amazon a year ago and the world yawned. Last August, at the advice of some close friends, I changed things around, some on-line marketing, new book cover, and promoted it a bit. I even sent out some query letters. You know, all the things that real authors do.

To my amazement, people noticed the book. Fabric has been in the top 100 of techno thrillers since August 2012. It bounces around in the 10,000 to 15,000 range of all books sold on Amazon. Not too bad for a nobody author. Then, yesterday happened. I was actually writing a piece on retail sales growth in China (that’s what people pay me to do) and apparently Amazon’s sales tracking software fell apart. Fabric sold more on January 15th, than the last ten days combined. It jumped into the top 10 of all techno-thrillers, nestled in between B.V. Larson and Jack Silkstone. Hold on, those guys are real authors. I’m just a guy. Remarkably, Fabric hit the top 2,000 of all books sold on Amazon. Huh? I have no idea why this happened. I can’t even get an agent to take the time to send me a pithy rejection email.

So, while I wait for Amazon to send me an apology email explaining that someone else’s sales results were inadvertently posted to my account, I will enjoy my time in the sun.

Stupid Mayans


Well it would seem the World didn’t end today, which I must say puts a torpedo in my apocalypse hedging strategy.  So, thanks to the crackpot Mayans, I will need to immediately address:

  1. The stack of bills I have been accumulating. I hope those nice bill collectors are understanding. Bank of America seems to have a sense of humor. I read their 10-Q’s.
  2. Christmas shopping for the family. T -72 hour mark, no problem. Has Amazon developed quantum-state delivery yet?
  3. Groceries – I guess we will now need to keep eating, even though we face the grim reality of a post-twinke civilization.

If that isn’t bad enough, I will also need to work through the long-range plans I didn’t plan on needing.

  1. Kid’s college tuition – I keep telling them that Judge Smails from Caddyshack had it right – “The world needs ditch diggers, Danny.”
  2. Retirement planning – I will have to renew practicing for my post-retirement job – “Welcome to WalMart, would you like to open a checking account today or buy live bait?”
  3. Senior-age Health Care – Pretty sure I won’t need it. My kids seem to have started really caring as I go up and down the steps. I appreciate the way they jostle and push me for encouragement. Maybe they did hear #1.

So there it is, thanks to the Mayan’s awful grasp on planetary destruction, my life just got significantly more depressing. Last time I listen to an extinct society.

The older I get…


The older I get:

* I agree with Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicolson) in “A Few Good Men” more than Tom Cruise.

* I get more amazed at how music can evoke emotions at a visceral level. This goes from Pachelbel all the way to Eminem. Nothing is better than a good song.

* Blazing Saddles gets funnier and remains one of the funnest movies ever made.

* Nothing is better than having a dog (or cat).

PW Abbenhaus

Primary color missing, local school kids blue


I can’t really explain this, but, here it is – another Watley story.

Primary color missing, local school kids blue

BALLWINVILLE, MO – Freshly groomed children saddled with over-stuffed back packs, familiar yellow buses ambling through neighborhood streets, panicked shuffling as bells ring out the start of class…all scenes from a typical back to school year. Only this year, for one area school district, it is different.

“I don’t know what happened,” lamented Mary Lou Wilson, a pig-tailed first grader at Rolling Hills Elementary. “When we packed up my crayon box yesterday, he was there. Now, he isn’t. I really miss him,” Mary Lou said holding back tears. “I can’t draw sky.”

Mary Lou, like hundreds of other mystified students in the Rockhill School District, opened their crayon boxes only to discover blue missing from the usual assortment of colors.

“This is very disturbing,” an angry district superintendent Chuck Cousins said. “As you can imagine, we rely on the color blue quite a lot in our curriculum. For God’s sake, blue is a primary color. To have that color missing really puts a damper on our teaching abilities.” Cousins indicated the school district was working hand in hand with local authorities to quickly solve the mystery. For the time being, the district will substitute aquamarine for blue.

There are not many explanations for the absence of blue, but some suspect foul play. One area resident, Vera Owens, notified police as she discovered dozens of soggy blue crayon wrappers scattered among strange ice cube size cement blocks that had washed up on the shoreline of a large lake on her property.

Local authorities had little to add, but did confirm the lake was being drained. “We really can not comment on the blue situation,” said Detective John Phillips. “We are looking into the reports from Owens Lake and depending on what we discover this case may develop into something larger. We have a few leads but have questioned no one at this time.” The detective said for now the missing color appears isolated to this one school district,

Some people were indifferent to the missing blue. “Blue isn’t that big of a deal. I mean, sure blue’s a primary color, but it’s not like it’s a gemstone or anything,” local jewelry store owner Scott Merrs commented. “Plus, I’m really glad to see aquamarine get its do. It really is a much calmer, more peaceful color. We sell a lot of it.

Others shared the anti-blue sentiment. “Let me tell you something,” said one non-primary color who requested anonymity. “Blue was a pompous ass. He was an elitist, always looking down his nose at the other colors. He made sure to let you know he the most popular color and that kids loved him because he so cheerful and happy. Man, he would rub your face in it. It was sick.” The color didn’t rule out the possibility of foul play. “Blue always thought aquamarine was poaching on his turf. They had a lot of fights and some nasty ones too. Mind you, I ain’t saying I know what’s going on, because I don’t, but I think blue got what was coming to him.”

It is a sad start to a promising school year in this Midwestern town, a generation of kids that will grow up using red, green, yellow and aquamarine as their primary colors. “It’s just not right,” a somber superintendent Cousins said.

Guinea Pigs: the dumbest mammal


I was looking over some of my old scribbles and found this classic story I wrote for the Watley Review. I had to reblog it.

It’s Official! Guinea Pigs are the dumbest mammals on Earth.

Ballwinville, MO – In a somewhat surprising announcement today, a U.S. government agency tasked with finding the relative IQ’s of land based mammals published their final rankings. The meek guinea pig scored the lowest of all.

“We really didn’t expect the results we got.” said Dr. Tim Covington head of the Animals for Strategic Defense Agency. “The guinea pig display an extremely narrow range on our tests of basic cognitive abilities. You know, basic things, like not eating your own feces, remembering to breathe, or not urinating on yourself. All told, when we tabulated our results, the Guinea Pig group we tested actually scored a 0.5 out of 100 across the board on all of our intelligence tests. I have to say, that’s pretty hard to do.”

Covington declined to comment on why the government was conducting the tests, but noted that field mice and chipmunks were the big winners, scoring high in both cognitive ability and basic intelligence.test. As to the weak performance of the guinea pig, some were surprised, but few doubted the results.

“When you take a moment to think about the guinea pig,” noted famed zoologist Joseph Holsinger, “I think even Darwin would scratch his head. In a world filled with predators, they have no defense capabilities. They have very low environmental tolerance whereby small variances in heat and moisture can kill them. Their immune system is non-existent, which results in sudden death from even the most common strains of bacteria. Mix that in with the fact they are extremely nearsighted and don’t hear very well, you quickly conclude its a miracle this species has survived. As I see it, in the basic food chain, the guinea pig is designed to be nature’s equivalent of a Happy Meal.”

Dr. Covington concurred. “I mean, we know the guinea pig has a brain, but other than to keep its skull from collapsing, we are not really sure what they use it for. If not for children and pet stores, I think the guinea pig would have gone the way of the Dodo years ago.”

One local pet store owner who refused to be identified commented, “Oh hell yeah, they’re dumb. Funny story, I once had a Guinea Pig that choked to death while it was eating its own foot. True story,” the store owner said with a laugh. “Look, the bottom line with guinea pigs is, they are cute, they eat a lot, and they have a really short life span, all of which is good business for me.”

The much maligned Guinea Pig can do one thing well, though. “Yes,” said zoologist Holsinger, “the guinea pig can reproduce with the best of them. The average female can have up to 20 offspring in a year. That’s the highest rate among land-based mammals.”

The guinea pig – too dumb to exist, but smart enough to have a colossal sex life. Ignorance just may be bliss.

 

PW Abbenhaus