Monthly Archives: November 2009

Short Story The Station On The Edge

So here is  a story that is about to be placed into the trunk. It was a semi-finalist in the Writers Of The Future contest, but has been unable to find a paying home. Please enjoy it and others of mine in the trunk.

The Station On The Edge

by

Robert Mitchell Evans

“We’re going to die!” Peymon’s voice cracked as he trembled in his seat. I can’t say I blamed him. Things didn’t look at all good right then, and they grew steadily worse. Paymon was a small man with a thin frame, nearly nonexistent chin and a enough nose for three men. His short black hair was as unsettled as Paymon himself.

“Shut up or I’ll eject you right now!” An empty threat; the police cruisers shooting at us held my attention, not his bloody whining.

“Can we make the jump?” Carol was cool, either from manipulated genes or a natural ice-queen personality. I couldn’t tell which. Carol was much more to my liking. she was tall with long rich blond hair, more than ample curves, and blue eyes that color I’ve heard Earth’s sky used to be.

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a curious sense of mortality

So it is open enrollment at work for our healthcare and other benefits. This year I am taking care of something I should have done at the last open enrollment, upping my life insurance to cover the cost of the condo should something happen to me. I want to make sure my sweetie-wife has no worries about where she will live if that happens.

So I got on line and made the changes and upped the coverage to cover the outstanding price on the condo.
This has left me with a curious sense of my own mortality. I’ve been married less than two years, and I was never married before and never had a mortgage before. Somehow making these changes really brought home to me that death is out there waiting for me.
(It didn’t help passing the scene of a deadly bicycle/auto accident on the way to work Monday.)

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Bugged by a crazy idea

For the last few days a silly idea has been bugging me.

We moved into this condo a year ago in May, May 2008 to be precise. In what has become my office we have a nook where someone expected a wet-bar to be installed. There is a sink, wioth working water, and racks above for cocktail glasses. We’ve not planned to use it as a wet bar and mainly just use it as storage currently.

I was online at Amazon and I saw home soda kits available for purchase. Now I buy a lot of soft drink and thought that this might be a way to save money. (The mark-up on soft drinks is outrageous.) Well, the kits for sale certainly didn’t pan out. These counter top units make two liters at a time and that would have been plenty for me, but they use off brand syrups. In other words it would have been generic colas and not the name brands I like. The name brands are not sold in consumer sized lots, but rather in three and five gallon bags-in-boxes for used with pressurized soda fountains. I am very picky about the tastes of my soda and I certain the off-label brands would not have satisfied me.

Soda fountains…..

Here’s where the madness began.

How about installing a soda fountain in the nook where the wet-bar would be. It has water line, power, and space. There would be easy access from my office and the living room – where my friends and I game and watch movies — which is right off my office.

I went as far as to do internet searches on systems. Boy, are they expensive.  Two flavor towers brand new can run $1500. It would be a long time before that investment paid off in savings. ( about a 12 pack per week, @ 5.99 per pack means I spend per year about $312. Evne if I cut my costs in half it would take about 10 years to pay off.)

Of course used systems are much cheaper…..

It’s a silly idea, but one that holds a strange fascination for me.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Princess Bride

theprincessbrideIt is hard to believe that it has been twenty-two years since I first saw the film, The Princess Bride. The film took my breath away with its romance, its humor, and its action. This was and still is a wonderful  film to discover. William Goldman, author of the novel and the screenplay, subverts the cliches of the fairly tale without mocking them. He takes a fairly standard plot-line and set of baseline characters and weaves something truly original. The novel is well worth the time to read, even if you have seen the movie. People interested in adaptation of novels to screenplays should pay strict attention as Goldman is the master of the art. (Some of his previous adaptations, include Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and The Ghost and the Darkness.) This perfect date movie was directed flawless by Rob Reiner, son of comedian legend Carl Reiner and a talent who has become a force for directional skill and artistry in his own right.

Reiner cast the film perfectly, Carey Elwes as Westley, Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, and Andre the Giant as Fezzik the Giant. (in fact Goldman tells us that the role of Fezzik was written with Andre The Giant in mind so it truly was perfect casting.)

After suffering through The Mist as last weekend’s Sunday Night Movie, I knew I wanted to watch a film that would make me feel good about life and love and dreams. Something to cleanse my palate, my mind, and my soul of the foul taste that wretched film left behind. It was down to my favorite — emotionally speaking – film of all time, The Princess Bride.

Despite suffering from a headache all day Sunday (one that plagues me even now even as I write this on Monday night) The Princess Bride lifted my spirits, brought joy to my heart, and laughter to my lips. I also had a spot of inspiration into the ending fight for my novel Cawdor.  It will sort of be the inverse of the final fight between Inigo and Count Rugen – The Six Fingered Man. The hero will say nothing all during the fight. She will be an implacable force for vengeance.

This film is medicine for the soul. It washes away cynicism and helps reveal a better heart.

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Board Game Review Last Night On Earth

My sweetie-wife and I are board and card gamers as frequent visitors to this blog are aware and recently we had the chance to play a new boardgame. We have now played three games of Last Night On Earth: The Zombie Game.

The creators of the games certainly know their zombie and horror movie cliches. The game is a contest between the human player(s) and the Zombie player(s). The game can support from 2 to 6 players. The game board has a central section, and four outer boards that make up the playing surface. There are a total of six outer boards in the game, so that creates a number of different board layouts. Players act as heroes, individual characters with special traits and abilities trying to survive a night of Zombie infestation. (In the most basic game victory conditions for the Heroes is to kill 15 Zombies before 15 turns expire. Other scenarios have different victory conditions.) Heroes have the advantages that they can get items and weapons and move faster than the zombies. The Zombies have the advantages of endless numbers and a limited time factor on The heroes.

The game mechanics are fairly straight forward and simple. Combat is risk-like with each side rolling dice and comparing the highest dice to determine the winner of the fight.

The game plays in 60-90 minutes and it is fast paced. I found the play to be exciting and with enough decision points to keep the game from becoming stale or predictable.

If you watch zombie movies and you like boardgames give this a try.

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Board and Card gaming tonight

So tonight we’ll have friends over and try out a six player game of ‘Last Night On Earth’ the Zombie board game. I’ve played two games of it so far, one with my sweetie-wife and one last night with a total of four players and its a fun little game. Tonight with six should be interesting, and tonight we’ll play the soundtrack CD that came with the game.

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The New Model

If any doubts that theatrical exhibition is becoming a form of advertisement for the DVD/Blu-ray version of movies, consider this point of evidence:

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra went from theaters to Blu-Ray in 90 days.

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The recent off-cycle elections

First point to make: everyone spins there losses as not being pertinent to the situation and everyone conversely spins their victories as great and meaningful. So a lot of the spin going on from on high and punditry in general is meaningless. Were the results of any particular result reversed, the sides would smoothly flip to saying the exact opposite.

Not too long ago prominent Republicans were telling us that “deficits do not matter.” Now they are a matter of life and death and when power switches hands again in Washington — and it will boys and girls it’s only a matter of when — then they will once again feel that deficits do not matter.

All that said I think the NY-23 district was an interesting race. The forces of Conservative Populism (A term I picked up from Nate Silver) chased the Republican candidate from the field and delivered the district to the democrats. So far the CP movement has delivered two seats to the Democratic party. (Sen. Arlen Specter and now NY-23) There are those who think this is a good thing. That the Republican Party needs to be more Conservative and there is an argument for that. It’s hard to win if you are trying to be the opposition-lite. However, in our two party, winner take all system, to win you need your base and you need the middles. Whoever does that wins. Making your base more extreme at the cost of the middle doesn’t strike me as a winning strategy. (This would matter less if we had proportional representation, then we’d have more parties and the parties could be more ideologically defined. That’s not our system so a drive for purity yields losses.)

I will not extrapolate these results into predictions for 2010 and hell no for 2012., There’s way too much time and way too many events between here and there.

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