Horizon Realty puts foot in mouth, then swallows leg

In a snafu that only the RIAA and MPAA could have topped, Horizon Realty of Chicago have managed to stir up a tweetstorm of negative sentiment in a PR disaster where they took a single tweet by a disgruntled ex-tenant and threatened to sue her.

I am here not only to add my 2¢, but to glom my blog post into the snowball.

This from the best blog post on the subject:

The Chicago Sun-Times reported yesterday that Horizon Group Management LLC, an apartment leasing and management company, has filed a libel suit against former tenant Amanda Bonnen.

Apparently Ms. Bonnen sent out a Tweet on May 12 that read in part:

“Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

Horizon Realty Group didn’t like that, and has filed suit.

And then, in the most brilliant glaring PR error ever, Chicago’s Horizon Realty Group make a statement to the effect of, “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.”

Is that a whoops or a WTF?

Link, via The Phoenix Real Estate Guy, and article, via the Chicago Sun-Times.

(Did I actually say “tweetstorm” above?)

Project Wonderful fun

Well, my registration for publishing ad space on my newest webserial, Black Hat Magick, went through. So things are looking good. Certainly, it may take some time to get enough notice to make even a few cents a day—but, hell, anything is going to be helpful to pay for hosting and other things.

I just started into Chapter 8: Vote Early this week; this is where things get a little bit fun, I’m playing around with the concept of student elections. I even got a kind and wonderful comment!

Think the story is ghostbuster-esque?

I just realized that, in fact, I don’t have any jokes in the story from Ghost Busters! What am I doing ignoring such an important icon of geekdom? I must rectify this situation.

Now, I just need to convince people to review the story on Web Fiction Guide…

VenomFangX and his triumphant not-return to YouTUBE

So, the whole Ray Comfort vs. Thunderf00t discussion was posted on YouTUBE. Thunderf00t spends a great deal of time speaking against Creationists, and anyone else who misrepresents empirical scientific knowledge about the world and our universe. As such he runs afoul of people like VenomFangX who from day one regurgitated the well-debunked lectures of Kent Hovind (convicted fraud, felon serving time in prison for his crime.)

He posts videos revealing the bad arguments, propaganda, and intellectual dishonesty of the Creationist movement and its proponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEr_Eo8I9E

Shortly into the video, I saw this:

Uni = One

Verse = A spoken sentence

VFX has his etymological background messed up, verse in universe is from vertere, which is “to rotate or turn.” This sort of poor scholarship is indicative of VFX’s dishonest presentation—not because he gets things wrong, but because he gets them wrong, gets corrected (over and over), and never chooses to learn from it.

Thunderf00t doesn’t ridicule people about their delivery; but he does shine light on the ridiculousness of the content. Making fun of Tf00t for stuttering while having a cordial discussion with Comfort and then using that as a segue to claim that Tf00t is a hypocrite for showing people to be ridiculous is pure asshattery.

Tf00t has never claimed he has an absolute understanding of everything and he doesn’t claim to know things he doesn’t—in fact, this is the point that VFX harped on all through the first five minutes of the video. But then around 5:54 VFX says, “…you claim that you have an absolute understanding of everything.” How transparent is that?

6:25 VFX looks to an exchange where Comfort plays a game of equivocation with Tf00t. In a friendly discussion everybody doesn’t force everyone else to define everything, but according to Comfort’s context he basically tried to say “life = soul.” And Tf00t is thinking that Comfort is referring to an untestable, uncorroboratable supernatural force and is arguing against that.

I recognize the “your dog and your horrible neighbor are drowning which one would you save?” question, and I’m puzzled why Tf00t even answered it—although, he does seem to be Aspergers to a bit, which means that this honesty is going to be very pointed. Why he didn’t just turn it around to: “A white man and a black man are drowning, who would you save?” or even “A man and a woman are drowning, who would you save?” to Comfort. The positive effect of this hypothetical situation is designed to provide values for lives, and it’s intrinsically true that as social creatures we do automatically apply value to life when in life or death situations. Come to think of it, the pointed question back to Comfort would have been to take away the “dog” (inhuman) status from the friend.

So VFX: “Your sister (or how about best friend) and your horrible neighbor are drowning, you can only save one—who would you save?” By the way, we’ll flash “Love your enemy as yourself,” on a billboard as you’re deciding. Using this sort of question is really uncalled for in any sort of cordial debate.

VFX’s not-return video is poor criticism and in the vein of his usual disingenuous presentation.

Symptoms may include hypersalivation

Today we applied some Flea & Tick medication to Pullo.

The stuff was really liquid, dribbled all down his back, wouldn’t stay in place and as a result, he could lick at it. And this is exactly what he did. And then he started foaming.

Grglglgleaglh, said Pullo.

Thankfully, we were informed by the veterinarian that hypersalivation—henceforth known as attack foam—is a common side effect of when the cat licks up the medication. It would pass with time. And it did. I exploited the fact that he loves ice-water to get him to drink a bunch and dilute the stuff.

So we had a fun day.

Starting late, but not ending early

Volume 13

Been having a bit of writer’s angst lately. I only just recently finished polishing up the first chapter of Mill Avenue Vexations Vol 13. And it’s been something of a bear. I think maybe that I’ve fallen into a rut like Cory Doctorow tweeted about earlier this week—I am beginning to really hate my current writing projects, which suggests that I’m almost done with them

Vexations Vol 13 is only 3 volumes away from the end; and I really need to start thinking about how I need to resolve and otherwise bring things to a head. It’s slow going but … I think that I can do it.

I am aiming for 36k words in less than the next two months so we’ll see how well I do.

Just my general run-of-the-mill update.

I slung that chapter off to one of my beta readers and I’ll get to work on the next one tomorrow. At this rate—assuming I cannot up the rate—I’ll have this volume polished up by Friday. I won’t start really editing the hell out of it until I’m done with Volume 16. Which, well, may take me a bit longer than the end of this month.

And then the artwork commissions start.

So much work, so little time to do it in.

Project Wonderful

So I registered for advertisements on Project Wonderful on Black Hat Magick. I know that I don’t have thirty (30) posts quite yet, but I’ll have twenty-three (23) tomorrow, and as the weeks go by, thirty will appear. Hopefully they don’t hold this against me and see that I’ve been a pretty good publisher and advertiser insofar and keep that in mind.

I could use the extra tiny amount of trickle money to help pay for the hosting.

Sketches: Black Hat Magick, Elaine, Hadaly, and Frog

Rebecca Gunter from SOAP has been working on some new character portraits from some of my work, and here are the preliminaries that we’ve been working with. It may be a week or so before we have color versions, but those will be posted slowly onto the Black Hat Magick website.

Elaine is the main character, geek extreme; the next girl is Hadaly, an Artificial Intelligence seen in her android body; and finally is Frog—yes, that’s just a nickname—with her fencing foil and Dungeon & Dragons nerd t-shirt, “Yes, they’re natural” d20s.

Thunder over Michigan, no kidding

Yesterday our house was buzzed multiple times by extremely loud, low flying jets. At least they looked like fighter jets. Not complaining, exactly, it’s not like they were doing these maneuvers during the early morning (afternoon really.) I just figured I’d like everyone know what I discovered about what might have been going on.

One of my flatemates figured that it involved Willow Run Airport, an airstrip within jet distance, showing off their wares. Then, today, I started looking into more things happening there and I discovered an airshow happening soon called Thunder Over Michigan.

You can check out the air museum's four-engine B-17 and twin-engine B-25 -- along with many other aircraft -- during Thunder over Michigan at Willow Run Airport.

The highlight of the event will be demonstrations by the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels. The precision flight team will be making its only Michigan appearance of the summer. There also will be a salute to Vietnam War veterans and re-enactments of events from World War II and Vietnam.

Now, as to why articles like the above refuse to put dates (it does say Saturday and Sunday, but it would be nice if there was something like July 17, 2009.) And I don’t understand why a lot of online newspapers simply refuse to link their sources. Sure, the URL is on there, but it’s not hot linked. Deliberate? Very likely.

Why don’t they just get over themselves, hot link in articles, just activate “open in new window” with target=“_blank” or something and stop annoying users with bad Internet etiquette? Please.

Link, via the Free Press about the upcoming Thunder Over Michigan Airshow.

Bookworms, chuzzles, and – RPGs?

Well, I’ve been working slowly on Crime Scene Unit Obscura for my wonderful kaywng and also on the next season of Mill Avenue Vexations. That’s the writing front. However, other things have been going down.

Such as my very own review of Chuzzle Deluxe by Popcap Games for Vox ex Machina. Now, I’ve also been playing Fate II, another tiny game downloadable and playable—but really, the one that is catching my attention right now is one about a Bookworm.

Apparently, over at Popcap there is an RPG that involves spelling and a role playing game. I’ll update everyone on how that goes.

In between collecting delicious chuzzle eyeballs and beating down waves of enemies Gauntlet style in Fate II.

For Sale: Hell, and Step On It

You can own a copy of Hell and Step On It right now for just $1.00.

This story originally published in the Twilight and Thorns horror anthology by Circle Dark Press—an anthology that has gone out of print—is not available again in e-book format. Instead of trying to find something that is no longer in print, you can buy it here.

Here’s a piece of Mill Ave Vexations canon and you will also be helping continue the writing tradition of these stories.

Formats exist for the Amazon Kindle and others that can be read in Stanza on the Apple iPhone!

The Deal: Mill Avenue Vexations comic book

Been playing around with my graphics skills, trying to set up advertisements for this upcoming comic book. I just finished lettering the pages and it's about time to get this to the printers.

Here's hoping all of that goes well.

Now available for sale!

Link, via Mill Avenue Vexations

BLOOD: Vampires at last…?

Oh, Saya, as if we didn’t have enough vampire animés to go around—but still. Who else is with me in that BLOOD+ and BLOOD: The Last Vampire had a certain strange Nipponese school girl trope going for it.

Now they’re going live action with it.

And I gotta say, the costume certainly made me snicker the moment I saw it on the screen. I suppose we’ll have no small part of blood flinging from katanas this Friday.