March 29, 2007 by Hawk.

I’m quite fond of the online, web based game, The Kingdom of Loathing. I’m also a moderator in their forums and often host fairly popular photography contests. If you’re a player on KoL, have a camera of some sort and want to earn some in-game currency or if you just want to check out several dozen great pictures that have been entered in my latest contest head on over to my contest thread and take a look see.

Enjoy!

Hawk

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March 29, 2007 by Hawk.

Yeah, I know, I’ve neglected the blog for a while. Not much and at the same time too much to get bent out of shape over and rant about. That and I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my hands and left shoulder which make typing difficult and painful….

If you are reading my babbling, please, drop me a line or post a reply or something.

Hawk

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March 29, 2007 by Hawk.

You’ll find them everywhere…

Let me explain… maybe there’s a better term, Rabid Fan Boi comes to mind, but the ‘net’s full of people who’ll make excuses for things that suck. A prime example is the popular web comic ‘User Friendly’. The gods help you if you express any type of comment that could in any way be construed as negative. It’s laughable and frightening to see the number of people who feel they’re free to express their opinion about you, personally, intimately and with such venom for even the most innocent of comments. I recall one time, the last I ever posted or read comments on the site, when I simply commented that “I’d like to see a new story arc” after the current one had gone on for more than a week and was nothing more than beating a dead horse by the end. I received hundreds of flaming responses telling me they’re free to call me a fuckhead but I have no place questioning the ‘master’.

Another find was the forums for a new author I recently discovered, Laurel Hamilton, I’d avoided her writing because it was most often labeled ‘vampire erotica’ and let me tell you, after Poppy Z. Brite left horrible imagery in my mind I wasn’t all that interested in the genre. But I caught a short story of hers in an anthology and read a collection of her short stories so I gave her ‘Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” series a try. I really enjoyed it! At least the first several (6, 7, 8?) novels. I laughed out loud in several places in many of the books they were that well done. Then, something changed in the last few books. Plot was pushed to the side to discuss the male characters gigantic throbbing members, incessantly, paragraphs of not-really-erotica (titillation really) turned into pages and chapters of really badly written porn. REALLY bad porn. The author’s comment on her blog to people who simply asked ‘what happened?’ and ‘why?’ was to tell them to go away. She’s writing these books for herself and if you don’t like it, lump it. Yes, that’s right, the thousands of you/us who are paying exorbitant prices for books these days can go just go to hell. And the way her apologist fan dorks treat people who’s opinions don’t mirror their own, frightening.

A hearty hi-ho fuck you to all you apologists, if you’re free to express your opinion so am I. Don’t like it? Lump it! And a final note to Illiad, it’s rather sad that after all these years your site can’t be self sustaining and you feel the need to run nag screens to try and get people to donate while other sites (I won’t name names) are not only self sustaining they raise millions for charity along the way. You’re doing something wrong… Maybe you should listen to people other than the apologists who keep telling you you’re doing a great job?

Hawk

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March 6, 2007 by Hawk.

A few years ago I threw something away… I don’t remember what it was or exactly why I tossed it but it was bad, dented, spoiled, something. Later that day it hit me, this is stupid, I’m throwing my damn money away and I was mad about that. So I gave the company that made whatever it was a call and told them I was damn unhappy with them and their product. To my surprise they apologized, profusely, and offered to replace it. A week later I had a coupon for whatever it was I had pitched in the garbage can.

Right then and there I decided, I’m not going to throw my money away on bad products. I’m not going to shut up, shrug and say it’s ok, only two cans in the 12-pack were dented or only one was completely empty. I’m going to bitch about it until they do something about my complaint.

A couple years later I had an older mattress that developed a bad ‘body dent’. It was still under warranty so I called the company I bought it from, they sent a new mattress out with some delivery boy to ‘inspect’ the old mattress. He found some two inch wide stain from where I spilled a soda and declared they couldn’t make the exchange. The old me would have just rolled over and gone out, probably to the same store, and bought a new mattress. The new me fought for my warranty coverage. I fought with the store manager and the district manager. I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint. I fought with the representative from the mattress company who ran me around for over a month. And I got my new mattress.

Now I’m not telling you to lie or even embellish but if you’re not happy with something you’ve spent your money on, complain. Speak out and be heard. Companies spend millions of dollars a year trying to get you to buy their products and most are more than willing to compensate you to keep you as a customer. So when you open that 12-pack of Sierra Mist and the last three cans in the pack look like this:

Say something about it! It took me all of five minutes to send a complaint to Pepsi about the can above and three days later I had a coupon for a free 12-pack in my mailbox. Don’t throw your money away people, use ‘The Power of the Bitch’ and let them know you won’t waste your money on bad products anymore.

Hawk

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March 3, 2007 by Hawk.

So I got this anthology of short stories because one of my favorite authors, Alan Dean Foster, has a story in the book. I browse through the index and find the page his story begins on and I start flipping through the book when it falls open TO the page I want because someone’s already put a bookmark there!

That’s just freaky…

 Hawk

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