This won’t be news to a majority of the readers that still stop by here, but in case you’re one of the rare few, my friend Betsy Phillips (better known to the blogosphere as Tiny Cat Pants author Aunt B.) wrote a novel featuring ghost stories steeped in Nashville legends and lore – a haunted alternative history of Nashville, I guess you’d say – and it was just released on Amazon today and you can get a copy here.
It also has a cover photo that is quite possibly my favorite picture of Nashville ever, shot by the enormously talented Chris Wage.
For you Kindlephiles, it’ll also be out for the Kindle soon.
Also just a reminder to please (if you don’t mind) change any bookmarks and blog links to the Zone to the default WordPress URL of http://thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com/ (and for the music blog, http://lynnstersmusiczone.wordpress.com) – I think the feeds are pointing correctly (but if you’re not finding my new posts in your feed reader, please let me know so I can see what’s up with the feed). I really don’t know when I’m going to be able to get this situation resolved with my domain host and get thelynnsterzone.com pointing back here (donations welcome, LOL) but you can always find me at the default URL anyway. Thanks!
Some probably recall that I deep-sixed cable TV a few years ago. It wasn’t for financial reasons at the time, really, since I was still working a traditional job at the time with a steady paycheck; it was just simply because I was hardly watching any TV at all – cable or network – and most of what I did watch was available to watch online, albeit often a few hours or days after the initial broadcast, but I could always catch up. I just couldn’t justify paying what had grown to nearly $100 a month anymore when I never watched it, and even downgrading to a lesser package was still an expense I couldn’t justify, as little as I watched. Plus I had a Netflix account, so movie and even series watching was just more convenient that way anyway, for the most part.
So I cut cable and pretty much stopped watching TV, and haven’t regretted it since except for once, and that was Internet-related, not TV-related. When I got to the point where I’d just about had it with my increasing frustrations with AT&T and was fed up and thought about switching to Comcast, I discovered that even though it hadn’t been all that long since I’d turned off cable, I wasn’t eligible for the self-installation and Comcast was insisting on sending someone out to install it AND charge me an installation fee, so there went that idea out the window.
So anyway, yeah, I don’t watch TV. Really I don’t even watch TV online anymore, except occasionally. Time that would have in the now-distant past been spent watching some TV, like when I remember to eat dinner every two or three days (yep, I still forget to eat all the time) – instead I read blogs, or (more and more recently) look for interesting stuff on YouTube.
That in itself has its pros and cons. The best part is I have found some really amazing, fun stuff on YouTube in the past year or so. Some really funny, brilliant stuff.
The other side of the coin is that once you start watching one thing, it inevitably leads to a dozen more videos or a dozen other YouTube peeps. This is especially true if you’re a music junkie – you could easily get stuck there for DAYS – but also true of a lot of the comedy/sketch performers, and also just the plain old personal “vloggers” there are these days on the site.
The funny/comedy stuff is really, really great though, and while a lot of it is still pretty raw and rough (which is not a bad thing in itself by any means), a good bit of it’s very nicely professionally done these days as well. For me, the more immature and juvenile the humor, the better, since my sense of humor is pretty twisted and about on the level of a 12 year old boy (LOL), but there’s plenty of more sophisticated fare to be found on YouTube as well.
YouTube humor is cool in the way once upon a time way back in the dark ages, Saturday Night Live (which I haven’t really laughed at in 13 or 14 years) and Fridays (remember Fridays??) used to be cool. Or Fox in the early days, especially when Fox only broadcast a couple of nights a week (jeez, I’m old), and back when Sunday nights meant The Simpsons, Married With Children, In Living Color, and all the other hilarious shows that came and went. Sunday nights on Fox used to be the best.
I like a whole lot of different YouTubers, but the two that make me laugh the most are Matt Brown, better known as SwiftKarateChop, and Shane Dawson of ShaneDawsonTV. Both have become extremely popular on the Internet thanks to YouTube and appear to have a pretty broad following, heavy on the teenage fan side (especially girls), but many others too.
Shane (Twitter bio: “That guy from YouTube that wears his mom’s clothes…”) is an aspiring actor/comic from L.A. and is currently YouTube’s fifth most subscribed, and has a larger Twitter following than most of the verified celebs on Twitter. His YouTube channel is a mix of sketch comedy and personal commentary/vlogging. Just a really talented kid. (Following video NSFW):
Swifty is my favorite, though – (AskSwifty Twitter bio: “I talk funny”) – and I’ve spent countless hours cracking up over his videos. Fellow Nashville/Memphis/Knoxville/Tennessee/etc. bloggers will probably identify a good bit with Matt, who’s a neighbor just across the state line in North Alabama, and is just insanely hilarious and twisted, but in a really good and fun way. Between his commentary vids & collaborations with his friend and fellow Alabamian and YouTuber ChanceXplosion and Matt’s “Ask Swifty” series, I’ve just laughed until my sides ache. (Following video is most definitely NSFW):
So be sure to check out Matt’s & Shane’s YouTube channels, there’s hours and hours of hilarity there to take up all your spare time. They both also have alternate channels you can find linked from their main channels with a bit more personal vlogging-type stuff, and in Shane’s case, some pretty hilarious outtakes and bloopers.
And honestly, if they’re not your style and don’t make you laugh, both have several links to other friends and colleagues among the YouTube set that are equally funny as well and fun to watch. There’s definitely something for everyone around the YouTube humor set.
One thing that occurred to me recently, after having watched videos from those two and many other popular YouTubers for a while, is how awesome it is that all this stuff’s doable and available nowadays – but on the other hand, I’m kind of sorry this medium wasn’t around 20 or 25 years ago or so – just like I wish I’d had the kind of computer access kids do now for high school and college. We had a computer in my home, which not many did at the time, but we mostly used it to play games (heh) and not much else.
I was particularly thinking of my friend Travis Harmon of The Travis and Jonathan Show and Red State Update, who went to school with my ex and we ran around in the same crew in Middle Tennessee in my early college days. I glance now over at my bookshelf and see a VHS tape made back in 1986 and 1987 that I’ve had nearly as long, a copy of one of the first video ventures Travis filmed back starting when he was still in high school. It’s raw and rough and absolutely, utterly hilarious, and I think wow, what things might have been like had YouTube been around back then. I have another old acquaintance who did a lot of early video humor with his friends from college days and beyond – same thing for them. If YouTube had been around in the ’80s and early ’90s, what a big difference that would have made for many.
Certainly Travis has had some nice success in his career, but it’s been a long time coming and he’s worked hard for it. If he’d been able to start out on YouTube like guys like Matt and Shane are doing nowadays, that probably would have shaved several years off his work towards success. Consequently, Travis and Jonathan have a pretty nice following on YouTube now, of course.
And I hope many of these YouTubers see some great success out of their efforts – many are getting a pretty fair amount of attention just by their YouTube activity, but many of them deserve a lot more attention than they’re getting now. So go give ‘em some, subscribe to their channels, and try not to crack a rib laughing.
Well, that’s seven hours of my life I will never get back. I have spent most of the day since I woke up again (after working late last night) trying to rid my newish computer of a particularly nasty strain of malware/trojan/etc. that I’ve acquired before, but the last time I had it, that strain was more easily eradicated.
This one refused to be killed. As many know, I have a pretty large stable of protection programs of various kinds, and generally my computer is usually probably locked up tighter than Ft. Knox. None of my usual stable of stuff was working this time – all of which are generally excellent – nor about a half dozen more things I tried in the process. This thing just wasn’t going away.
Doubly sucks that I wound up with because of a stupid web page. I suppose I have a little bit of respect for the hackers that come up with executable virii & trojans, the ones you actually have to open up or DO something to get infected. I even have a friend who was one of those folks in his younger and stupider days. These drive-by web page weenies are just cowards and ought to be prosecutable to the fullest extent of the law.
Well, anyway, to make a long story short, after hours and hours and going through virtually every other program in my stable ‘o stuff which are all generally excellent and reliable, without a single one working to rid myself of this nasty piece of coward-created work -
Folks, I hereby present to you Malwarebytes. It was the ONLY one out of about twenty attempts with other programs to rid myself of this thing, and hours and hours of trying, that worked. I’m a believer now, and am probably going to be replacing one of my usual standards of protection with it, most likely.
I’m not much for commercial endorsements of any kind, but given the circumstances and the outcome, seemed like I ought to share.
On another note, apologies for the lack of anything much since Christmas. I’ve really been much too busy trying to stay afloat and not homeless and totally starving (as opposed to starving three or four days out of the week in general) and all that fun stuff. More soon, I hope.
So, have I mentioned that I’m now a Nielsen family? No kidding.
That’s a little bit scary, huh?
Yep, indeed I am. I have the little scanner thing, not unlike the ones they use at Wal-Mart and Target and Petco and such. I scan everything I buy when I get home, or when I get around to it, and once a week I transmit the data on everything I bought that week. It doesn’t take but a couple minutes to scan once you get used to it.
It’s really pretty neat, and you get points for it you can later redeem for some pretty cool stuff (I of course have my eye on the electronic section of the catalog), and they give away some pretty large cash prizes to people that transmit their data like they’re supposed to. I kept falling a week behind (though I guess I was on schedule for as far as the next week was concerned), but I finally got myself on schedule now.
It’s kinda cool, you oughta try it. It took a few months after I applied to be invited into the program, but you’ll probably get an invite eventually if you apply. They select randomly, so eventually your number’s likely to come up. Click here for the application.
I was at the store late last night and needing a cold drink, and there was no orange soda in the refrigerated soda case, so I was looking around and noticed something I had never seen or heard of – the new Mountain Dew Revolution, with wild berry flavor and ginseng. It’s blue, which is usually a tipoff that it’s either really bad or really good.
So I get home and take a swig and immediately hated it. Seriously was grading it a big fat F, not even a D. It tasted like carbonated cough syrup. But I didn’t have anything else cold to drink in the house, so I was going to finish it anyway.
Then a funny thing happened about 1/4th the way into the bottle. Suddenly, it started tasting good.
I don’t know. It would certainly never be a favorite, but it’s all right (after the initial couple of swigs anyway). It’s sort of similar to some of those energy drinks I don’t really like all that much but there’s something about them that tastes both good and not so good.
So if you haven’t tried it and want to give it a shot, be forewarned, but stick with it past two or three drinks. The carbonated cough syrup effect kind of goes away.
PS: New music blog here. (LOL, yes, I’m going to keep repeating that for at least a week or two.)
Speaking of Buchanan, Tennessee – and to lighten up the mood in here a little bit, much needed after that last post – I am really just about to die for a plateful of Bull Durham’s onion rings. I haven’t one in my mouth in about 35 or so years, I guess, because it’s been gone about that long.
Bull Durham’s was a restaurant down at Kentucky Lake that was pretty much your regular steak and seafood kinda place, but the onion rings – oh, the onion rings. They just, literally, MELTED in your mouth. They weren’t all packed with breading like the ones you get at Sonic; just lightly battered and browned, and yeah, they just melted in your mouth.
Back Yard Burger just started carrying onion rings a little while back and they are very, very close. In fact, I just had some for lunch, but while they’re close, they’re just not like Bull Durham’s real deal was. Ah, some days I would just about kill for Bull Durham’s onion rings and a dish of Pagliacci’s lasagna, another Paris restaurant that has been gone just about that long.
Speaking of Back Yard Burger – I don’t know how long they’ve been on the menu, but don’t bother with the “loaded” potato skins if you like your potato skins loaded, ‘cos they’re not. I don’t know who came up with the brilliant idea that loaded potato skins means just slap some cheese and bacon bits on ‘em, but they are sadly missing a key ingredient that would truly make them “loaded” (i.e., sour cream), and some chives would be nice too, but I’m not that picky.
I’ve been reading for years about Dawn dishwashing liquid (the original, not the “new” kind) and its ability to get rid of fleas and just kind of went “ehhh” about it. Not that I didn’t believe it worked at all, I just figured it probably didn’t work as well as people claimed it did.
I was so wrong.
We have had an awful time with fleas this year – which makes me want to cry because for years we were flea-less until the neighbor dogs moved in a couple of years ago, but anyway – this year has been the worst ever, and I don’t think Frontline is working as well as it used to, though it does seem to finally be working, or at least I think I’m finally seeing a dent in the cycle because most of the fleas I’m seeing now are juvenile and baby ones (heh, that sounds funny).
I’ve been reading a lot lately where people are saying Frontline Plus is no longer working, or works for a week and quits, or suggesting going back to Advantage a while and then reattempting Frontline, or postulating that the fleas are gaining immunity towards all of that type stuff. One of the statements I see frequently I tend to agree with most – Frontline Plus just does not seem to work as well as Frontline Top Spot. I do think the cycle is breaking, but it’s certainly not with the speed and severity that Frontline Top Spot always had.
In any case – before I get off topic any further – we’ve just had a time this year and among some other things I’ve been trying, and trying to avoid spending any more than the megabucks I finally had to cough up for Frontline and other measures, I finally decided to see if the Dawn legend really worked. It does!
My flea traps are drowning a number of those suckers nightly, all for the cost of a bottle of original Dawn dish liquid (a whole 96 cents at Wal-Mart right now). I have played around and tried a few different things now with it all (including another dishwashing liquid) and this method seems to work the best and attract the most fleas to drown. You need:
Said bottle of original Dawn dishwashing liquid detergent. Not the now-regular Ultra or anything else. Just plain old original blue Dawn.
A shallow bowl of water, preferably white. You can use clear ones, but the white bowls seem to attract them more. If I use a clear one, I put a piece of white paper under it and that seems to help too. But my small French White bowls (I call it the creme brulee size) and a Corningware mini-casserole dish I have seem to work best.
Best spot to place the bowl is on the floor. I’ve tried other and higher spots and they’ll work, but it seems to attract more if on the floor. You can put it in a corner or out of the way otherwise, they’ll find it, believe me.
A book light or night light. Many places you read will say a night light and those may work, but my problem is I live in an old house with few electrical outlets and even fewer where there’s any floor space underneath. I had a couple of mini-book lights, the kind that clip on the book and have the little bendable arm – you can get them at Walgreen’s lately, two for $3 – I just clip them on the side of the bowl and bend the light where it’s over the center of the bowl, and voila. I have tried some other little book lights since, such as some that Dollar Tree has right now, but they just don’t seem to attract as well as these little lights Walgreen’s is selling right now do.
I have one bedroom that has been hit particularly worse than the rest (Tojo the Psycho Cat’s bedroom) and my flea trap in there is catching 15-20 or more a night and starting to slow down a little, finally. The rest in the rest of the house are only catching one or two a night now, but it’s definitely all working.
I don’t usually use flea collars because they really don’t do much other than keep the pests away from their heads, but I did buy one for Tojo – unfortunately it was a cheap one and seemed to be making the fleas WORSE than they were, so last week I got the pricier Adams one. And last week washed all the bedding in the house, too.
Bombing the house, which would probably have been the quickest and surest way to eradicate all fleas, just wasn’t an option – there’s nowhere for all of us to go for a day – and after having spent a small fortune on Frontline, and other stuff leading up to the Frontline which was wasted money because nothing was working – the fact that the Dawn really DOES work, for 96 cents a bottle, is just WONDERFUL.
It’s all working. We are not 100% flea-free yet, but it’s better and we’re close, and I will swear by this Dawn method from now on. The dogs (and quite possibly one very mad cat) are going to have a bath with flea shampoo next week and then it will be time to Frontline everyone again, and after that (fingers crossed) with any luck we can go back to only treating the dogs with that stuff.
But I will be keeping at least one or two homemade Dawn flea traps on the floor at night at all times, maybe all year long but definitely during the warm months, probably one in Tojo’s room and another in some other corner of the house somewhere. I now highly recommend it for any dog or cat owner. Even if you don’t really have a flea problem or aren’t seeing any, just one bowl set up like that with the Dawn and the book light or night light ever night will almost certainly assure you don’t see any. It works!
Why fleas like the Dawn so much more than other liquid dish detergents – and why they prefer it as opposed to the newer, “ultra” Dawn – now that’s something to ponder, but I can tell you for a fact that they don’t like lemon Ajax as much.
So I got one of the new Fruitista Freezes at Taco Hell today because it’s like a million degrees outside in Memphis today. I got the just Strawberry instead of the Strawberry Mango, ‘cos sometimes mango doesn’t taste too good to me.
I give it a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up, even with the half dozen ice cream headaches that came with it.
The Squirrel Queen claims that one can relieve brain freeze by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, adding that it warms the nerve endings there that cause the ache. And Rachelagreed with her. But I dunno about that, that sounds awfully weird to me. I’ll try it next time tho.
On a semi-related note to new news, I guess I’m going to have to quit badmouthing that thing that rhymes with Clogger after all. I discovered it really HAS improved a great deal since most of us made the mass exodus to WordPress a couple of years ago.
Still could use some tweaking (and damned if they don’t have the SAME templates and NO new ones), but the system itself is really a whole lot better.
I’m not impressed enough to go back, and I still like WordPress much, much better. But it really has improved, I’ll give it that much.
