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Fix It, America: Let's Go To College.
2008-11-09 21:29:00
"Shame On America Sunday" is no more; I'm proud of America for doing the right thing and electing Obama, and have opted instead to try to become more positive, so we'll go with "Fix It, America" from now on.Without a college education, you can't get very far at all these days.With a college education, you can get far enough in life to be able to pay for that college education.That's the dilemma that faces most kids who are graduating from high school these days. Like the parents that work to avoid daycare, or the kid who works to pay off the car he uses to get to his job, high school graduates are confronted with the need to go to college in order to get a job to pay for the college they attended.Leave aside private schools; those who (unnecessarily) go to private schools may be left aside for the moment. This is about publicly owned schools, those state universities that are the college destination of both choice and necessity for most high school graduates.According to Colle...
More About: College

New stuff coming.
2008-11-06 20:18:00
A new post tomorrow, and until then, the newest part is: Flames! (Ghosts! Part 3)AfterDark: The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imaginepublishes horror stories in serial forms. Click the link or page down past the ads to read the newest installment, or go to the table of contents by clicking the picture or title below:Ghosts! There Are Ghosts!Father Albert Wentley has ghosts in his church. A lot of ghosts. And he wants to help them but doesn't know how.Famished: A Temporary Anne story! With each day of her life, she moved closer to Hell. Now, Hell is moving closer to her.fer de Lance:Philip the obituary writer thought he retired, but his job continues... with unexpected results.Help Mateo and McHale! The Wonder Twins are medical miracles, but they can't do everything. Find out more about them, and how to help them with their medical bills, by clicking this link.Extraordinary:Extraordinarybybrianef pGet this custom bumperstickerat ZazzleDo you like stuff? Do you think things are The B...
More About: Stuff

None of my pants demonstrate any sort of tactical ability. Except the tact
2008-11-06 17:51:00
With Halloween over and the world outside of AfterDark going back to not dealing with vampires and cannibals and stuff, you might find yourself thinking "What can I get for a Christmas present for that law enforcement person on my list?"Here's what you should do: pick them a tactical pant for a present -- you can get tactical pants at Operator Tactical Pants , but move fast because they're selling at a rate of 200 pairs a day, and they won't last long.And when you get the tactical pants from Operator Tactical Apparel, you get your money's worth -- they've got 20 years experience in the military and law enforcement, so they know what that soldier, officer, security personnel, or other law enforcement operative wants and needs to wear.
More About: Sort , Demonstrate

I knew it could be worse
2008-09-07 23:07:00
New today! Temporary Anne: Famished (6):I knew it could be worse.AfterDark: The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imaginepublishes horror stories in serial forms. Click the link or page down past the ads to read the newest installment, or go to the table of contents by clicking the picture or title below:Famished: A Temporary Anne story! With each day of her life, she moved closer to Hell. Now, Hell is moving closer to her.fer de Lance:Philip the obituary writer thought he retired, but his job continues... with unexpected results.Rage: He was taken from her before he was born. Now, he's back and wants her to know what she missed.Help Mateo and McHale! The Wonder Twins are medical miracles, but they can't do everything. Find out more about them, and how to help them with their medical bills, by clicking this link.Extraordinary:Extraordinarybybrianef pGet this custom bumperstickerat ZazzleDo you like stuff? Do you think things are The Best? Then you should be reading The Best Of Everythin...

Famished (6)
2008-09-07 22:45:00
His efforts at calling God in, if that is what he was doing -- or of blocking me through something holy -- failed.I leaped at him. I tensed my legs, which were mostly bone by then, and I splayed my horrible hands and I leaped at him and crashed onto him.I did not even knock him over. I weighed almost nothing when alive, or during my life before the first time I almost went to Hell. I was tall but slender and lithe. After that time, as I slowly grew more and more... stretched, and taut, and near-death, I weighed less and less. One must have flesh to have weight, and I had precious little of that.A few strands of my hair that were still long, but entirely colorless, fell on his forehead, and I had my bony claw-like hands at his throat and my face was open and I leaned in and looked into his eyes. I was so close... so close to biting him, to plucking out his eyeballs and eating them, and I needed the strength.I stopped, though. I did not need to eat him. I did not need to knock...

Shame On America Sunday: Cindy McCain Edition
2008-09-07 19:31:00
I came to a realization this morning, a realization that cemented my resolve to, every Sunday , highlight one way in which America is letting us down -- allowing some people to live selfish lives at the expense of others, when there is more than enough wealth in America to allow everyone to live a decent life.The realization was this: I subscribe to Newsweek magazine, and read it pretty much cover to cover every week. Despite that, and despite reading our daily paper, and despite listening to news-talk all day at work and watching CNN Headline News while I get ready for work, I had no idea what Barack Obama's health plan was when I wrote the first Shame On America Sunday a few weeks ago. Not through a lack of trying -- like I said, I keep up with the news pretty well. But the news isn't keeping up with the news. The news is focused on things like (from a recent Newsweek) stories about how often Joe Biden says "literally" in his speeches.That's why Shame on America Sunday is n...
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Shame On America Sunday: Barack Obama Edition.
2008-08-24 18:29:00
I try not to be too political or topical or, frankly, angry, on my blogs. I try that in part because there are people whose job it is to be political and topical, people who pay attention to politics and business and other news that in theory qualifies them to talk about politics and business; I mostly pay attention to what's on my iPod and comic books.But I can't help it; I've boiled over and I can't contain it anymore, and the people whose job it is to be political and topical -- the politicians and editorial writers and reporters and other people who are supposed to be doing something good for the world -- are fiddling while Rome burns. They are fretting over flag pins and medal counts at the Olympics while the United States of America , the greatest country ever embodying the greatest concepts of the human race-- slowly rots from the inside.And I can't stand it anymore. I'm tired of just making jokes about mystery writers and pizza while people struggle to pay medical bi...
More About: Barack Obama , Barack , Obama , Sunday

Mephistopheles Laughed.
2008-08-21 16:07:00
New! Temporary Anne: Famished (4)-- Mephistopheles Laughed AfterDark: The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imaginepublishes horror stories in serial forms. Click the link or page down past the ads to read the newest installment, or go to the table of contents by clicking the picture or title below:Famished: A Temporary Anne story! With each day of her life, she moved closer to Hell. Now, Hell is moving closer to her.fer de Lance:Philip the obituary writer thought he retired, but his job continues... with unexpected results.Rage: He was taken from her before he was born. Now, he's back and wants her to know what she missed.Help Mateo and McHale! The Wonder Twins are medical miracles, but they can't do everything. Find out more about them, and how to help them with their medical bills, by clicking this link.Extraordinary:Extraordinarybybrianef pGet this custom bumperstickerat ZazzleDo you like stuff? Do you think things are The Best? Then you should be reading The Best Of Everything! Wh...

Famished (4)
2008-08-21 15:47:00
I did not cower.I did not bow before it.I did not cry or scream or yell nooooooooo or do any of those things that someone might when confronted with the essence of evil.For one, I did not, because I was too amazed at its appearance. It is still, these decades later, hard for me to describe how Mephistopheles appeared. That beam of light held a form, a not-human form. It was not like an angel or like any creature, living or dead. At the moment when I first beheld Mephistopheles, I realized how wrong all along people had been to think that angels or demons would ever look even remotely like men and women. The minions, I knew, looked like nothing we could picture, and that was their horror.Mephistopheles, too, looked like nothing we could picture and nothing we can describe. It was when I saw it, too, that I realized the ultimate punishment and the ultimate horror of Hell, the purest form of evil destroying the will and spirit of the living, and that was this:Mephistopheles was b...

Thinking The Lions, and 117* Other Ways To Look At Life (*Give Or Take)
2008-08-19 04:16:00
My first collection of essays,Thinking The Lions , and 117* Other Ways To Look At Life (*Give Or Take)Is available for purchase through Lulu.com; get to it right away by clicking here.To celebrate, and to shamelessly promote it, I'm having a contest. Click that link (or this one), to see the picture on the front cover of the book, and then come up with a caption for the cover photo (Note: The photo on this entry is not the cover photo, so don't try to take the easy way out!)The winner will have their caption promoted on each and every one of my blogs, plus will win a free copy of the book!To submit your caption, leave it as a comment here, or email it to me at"thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com"(You know the drill -- put in "@" for the bracketed stuff!)Contest ends August 31!

You didn't really eat that, right?
2008-08-19 04:03:00
In the past ten years, I have slowly risen up the corporate ladder to a position that involves a great deal of money, power and influence... as you can tell from the nearly 10 hours of blogging I do everyday.Okay, so my job is not in the slightest stressful. Or at least not in the usual sense; it's stressful in the sense that it's very difficult to keep coming up with dumb joke after dumb joke while constantly being interrupted by people that think I'm in the office to "work." Plus, as everyone who spends more than ten seconds with me can attest, I have a lot of kids, and kids are synonymous with stress.I've tried a variety of ways, over the years, of coping with stress, methods that ranged from "eating lots of BBQ Fritos" to "eating lots of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch" and even "eating BBQ Fritos mixed with Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch."That last one actually caused stress.It turns out, though, that those are not healthy ways of coping with stress. I didn't know that at the ...

Coming soon.
2008-08-14 20:04:00
part three of Temporary Anne: Famished will be up soon!

Super Easy. Super Smart. Super Available: Business Credit For You!
2008-08-14 17:55:00
Everyone thinks there's a "credit crunch" going on, but everybody's wrong. While there are some lenders and borrowers who are experiencing hard times (or not-as-easy times), there are other lending areas that haven't suffered any downturns. Areas like Business Credit .Business credit hasn't suffered the same problems that consumer credit has, maybe because business credit is based on different standards than consumer credit. Business credit pays attention to income and assets and things like that, and less emphasis might be given to individual credit scores while more attention is given to how healthy the business is.How does that impact you? Simple-- if you're a business operator and you've been trying for credit as an individual, STOP! Start trying for credit as a business and take advantage of lenders' willingness to make business loans.Or, consider starting a business, using credit instead of savings -- with business credit more freely available, you could open up a ...
More About: Smart , Super , Easy

A wretched almost-skeleton
2008-08-13 16:49:00
Newest post: Part two of Temporary Anne 2: Famished!: Lying in the alley, Anne reflects on what led her to be a starving almost-skeleton, and her meeting with Mephistopheles. AfterDark: The Scariest Things, You CAN'T Imaginepublishes horror stories in serial forms. Click the link or page down past the ads to read the newest installment, or go to the table of contents by clicking the picture or title below:Famished: A Temporary Anne story! With each day of her life, she moved closer to Hell. Now, Hell is moving closer to her.fer de Lance:Philip the obituary writer thought he retired, but his job continues... with unexpected results.Rage: He was taken from her before he was born. Now, he's back and wants her to know what she missed.Help Mateo and McHale! The Wonder Twins are medical miracles, but they can't do everything. Find out more about them, and how to help them with their medical bills, by clicking this link.
More About: Skeleton

We also didn't wear socks. That was the style, back then. No socks.
2008-08-13 15:34:00
Back in the 80s, the days of spiked hair, upturned collars, and Docksiders, we used to cruise around in Bob's old white Impala, looking for something to do or at least some chicks to hang out with (and hopefully... "date.")Our pickup line? Hey, you chicks wanna do something?It wasn't classic, but at least it wasn't completely lame. We were completely lame, but our pickup line was just... pleh. Boring. Not so charming that the girls would overlook our Impala, our nerdiness, and our lack of money. But not so lame that they'd laugh at the line and drive off in Daddy's car, either.Based on that, it's probably a good thing for me that I'm far too old (and too married!) to take part in the Ultimate Flirting Championship being sponsored by Extreme Style by VO5. Extreme Style by VO5 is hosting the championship -- the Olympics of flirting, if you will -- to find out who's got the best pickup lines, and hence the best possibility of having Victory Hair come Saturday morning."Vi...
More About: Back , Wear , Socks

Blood. It was bleeding me.
2008-06-09 16:10:00
The Thing In The Basement: Part Seven! Posted today! (click that link or scroll down a little bit past the ads.) AfterDark features horror stories published in serial format. A new part is posted roughly about once per week. Want to submit your own artwork? Drop me a line at thetroublewithroy @ yahoo.com Want to get updates when I post stories? Do the same.The Stories:The Thing In The Basement:All Jude wanted was to give his family a good life. But what The Thing In The Basement gives, it can take away. The Deal: Little Jake is tormented nightly by a demon, and his parents won't help. His brother might, but his brother is gone.You Know What Happens After DarkFreddy learns why we always close the eyes of the dead, and wishes that she hadn't. Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.Thinking The Lions is the hilarious compilation of the adventures of a guy wit...
More About: Blood

Dress like the best.
2008-06-09 13:47:00
A little bit of poetry in the title there, right? That's the grabber to get you in to start reading about Goldyn's great new clothing site.I'm a guy. That means my idea of fashion is to wear my "fancy" t-shirt with the jeans that are on top of the pile. The ladies, I can see from this site, have a different idea about high fashion, and I have to admit it looks nice. They've got some great looking dresses and shoes and outfits over there. True, most of it is lost on me because, like I said... guy. T-shirts. But I know nice things when I see them, and they've got them.To help me out, though, I enlisted Sweetie and the girls and they loved this site. They explained to me that the ability to get clothing from hot designers like Diabless and Charlotte Ronson and Andrea Brueckner is a good thing, and the prices are way, way better than you'd expect.I didn't know that. T-shirts don't have 'designers,' and look more or less all the same. But these clothes are anything but t-s...
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Oh, the things we trade!
2008-06-09 03:03:00
The Thing In The Basement: Part Six -- Oh, the things we trade-- posted today!AfterDark features horror stories published in serial format. A new part is posted roughly about once per week. Want to submit your own artwork? Drop me a line at thetroublewithroy @ yahoo.com Want to get updates when I post stories? Do the same.The Stories:The Thing In The Basement:All Jude wanted was to give his family a good life. But what The Thing In The Basement gives, it can take away. The Deal: Little Jake is tormented nightly by a demon, and his parents won't help. His brother might, but his brother is gone.You Know What Happens After DarkFreddy learns why we always close the eyes of the dead, and wishes that she hadn't. Herman:Herman The Wonder KittenbybrianefpGet this custom shirtat ZazzleWant a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World is a seria...
More About: Trade , Things

Video Classifieds: Not just for dinosaurs anymore.
2008-06-09 02:56:00
Everyone tries to sell their car through the classifieds, but there's two problems with doing that: the buyer can't tell whether the car's any good until he gets there, and you have to pay to run the ad.Listasaurus has in one fell swoop rectified both of those problems with their video classifieds: They'll pay you to run your video classified ad on their service, so not only do you make some moola, but you also have a better chance of actually selling that hot rod your wife made you get rid of.Rather than run an ad in the paper saying something like Car runs great $4000 obo, you can whip out a video where you walk all around the car, showing it from all angles and highlighting the cheetah-print seats. Then you can hop in and rev the ol' engine and take the would-be buyer for a virtual spin. That way, guys like me, whose wives let us have hot cars, can see that video, know the car runs and it looks great, and will come buy it. I don't want to waste half my Saturday coming t...
More About: Video , Classifieds , Dinosaurs

The Thing In The Basement (Six)
2008-06-09 02:54:00
Oh, the things we trade.The things we trade away.Like a little kid, trading away a Hank Aaron rookie card for someone else because he doesn't like Hank Aaron as much as that other player who doesn't even stick in his memory anymore, never knowing that the Hank Aaron rookie card would have allowed him to live a life of leisure.Okay, that's not my memory. That one was actually my uncle's. That's the only appearance he'll make in this story, though.My family was not one of the things I traded away for anything. They were just not a big part of my life anymore.Or maybe I did trade them away, because I did move away from them. And I enjoyed where I lived. Days like that one day, about two months after David was born. I was driving to work. I'd begun heading into the office a little more in those days, in part because I was busier, in part because I was trying to avoid the house, and what I'd come to think of as The Thing (I didn't really know where it was at that point. Remember...
More About: The Basement

Easy. Fast. Secure. Just like my dates in high school. Wait, I don't get
2008-06-09 02:43:00
Free secure backup of your data, available from any computer you have in front of you from anywhere in the world -- and available to others, as well: that's IDrive -- the online service provider that securely backs up your data.IDrive's software creates a virtual drive on your computer; when you save files to that virtual drive, they're locked into IDrive's secure server through the internet. This service is easy to use, it's fast to use, and it's secure. That security would be the most important thing, except that to me the most important thing is the low cost. I said "free," and I meant it. Back up up to 2 gigs of data for absolutely nothing. Want to store more? IDrive gives you 150 GB of storage for just $4.95 per month. 150 gigs of storage for less than $60 per year; you can't get a detachable hard drive for that price, and even if you did, you'd have to lug it around with you. Let IDrive do the lugging around; check out this amazing service today; they were voted b...
More About: Dates , School , High School , High , Fast

Kids are hard to take care of, but so are demons
2008-05-23 18:43:00
The Deal Part 7: Kids Are Hard To Take Care Of posted today.AfterDark features horror stories published in serial format. A new part is posted roughly about once per week. Want to submit your own artwork? Drop me a line at thetroublewithroy @ yahoo.com Want to get updates when I post stories? Do the same.The Stories:The Deal: Little Jake is tormented nightly by a demon, and his parents won't help. His brother might, but his brother is gone.You Know What Happens After DarkFreddy learns why we always close the eyes of the dead, and wishes that she hadn't.Eclipse Claudius was going to be the first man to ever walk on another planet. Now he's drifting through space alone. But he's got his memories...
More About: Demons

Free. Cash Back. Smart.
2008-05-23 18:14:00
You can have the best computer in the world, and the best internet DSL hookup, and a great location for working on your computer like that one awesome table at the coffee shop, but it doesn't mean diddly squat if you don't have a good ISP -- an Internet Service Provider.Your ISP is your link to the Internet, and choosing the right ISP is critical. Choose the wrong one and you might be paying too much and not getting the most out of your internet experience.With Get.ISP.Info, you can make an informed choice. They can help you decide whether dial-up is okay for you, or if you need a screaming fast DSL hookup. Then, once you've chosen your ISP, they can also give you information on protecting your computer from spyware and other Internet problems, and even give you advice on how to keep from being a victim of online con artists.But before you can avoid falling prey to wily Nigerians, before you can avoid pop-ups, before you can worry about whether your computer will be able to hold ...
More About: Free , Smart , Back , Cash

Kids are hard to take care of, but so are demons.
2008-05-22 16:02:00
The Deal Part 7: Kids Are Hard To Take Care Of posted today. AfterDark features horror stories published in serial format. A new part is posted roughly about once per week. Want to submit your own artwork? Drop me a line at thetroublewithroy @ yahoo.com Want to get updates when I post stories? Do the same.The Stories:The Deal: Little Jake is tormented nightly by a demon, and his parents won't help. His brother might, but his brother is gone. You Know What Happens After DarkFreddy learns why we always close the eyes of the dead, and wishes that she hadn't.Eclipse Claudius was going to be the first man to ever walk on another planet. Now he's drifting through space alone. But he's got his memories...
More About: Demons

Someday you'll be able to get AfterDark merchandise at the NBC Shop. But u
2008-05-22 15:48:00
When I watch scary movies at home, I tend to do so at about 1 a.m. and by myself. Which means at the end of the movie, I've got to turn off all the lights and go upstairs by myself, head full of images of demons and vampires and other things that probably don't exist but which just might, at 1 a.m.I've learned to be prepared. Sure, those things might not exist, but they just might, so I'd better be ready to fight them off if need be, which means I've got to get some ghost-busting stuff.Battling scary monsters in my imagination could be pricey -- but I've got a way around that. I save money using the online coupons available at Best Online Coupons.With the savings I get from that free site, which offers discount coupons and promotion codes to save at your favorite online stores -- over 700 different merchants in 19 different categories -- I can get all the things I need to safely make it up to my bedroom. Things like, say, an aluminum bat to help fight off werewolves. I kno...
More About: Shop , Merchandise , Afterdark

The Deal (Part 7)
2008-05-22 15:35:00
When they had first talked about having a baby, they had talked it through."Babies can change a lot," Lily had told Jim."How do you mean?" Jim asked.Jim had not been crazy about the idea of having a baby. Now he wondered what she meant by babies."They're a lot of work. I just don't want you to feel pressured.""We never talked about it much before," Jim said."We never talked about babies at all before," Lily pointed out. "But we're talking about it now.""I just want to make sure that it's what you want," Jim said. Lily thought that was a nice move. She'd only brought it up to make sure that it was what he wanted, and now he's acting as though it was his idea and he was concerned about her.She hadn't, at that point, told him that she was pregnant."It... I guess it is what I want, if it's what you want.""I want you," Jim said, "And I want you to be happy.""Do you want a baby?""Do you?""Well, yeah.""Then I do, too." Jim sounded convincing. He looked convincing. Lily did not doub...
More About: Deal , Part

The better way to do things.
2008-05-22 15:15:00
If you're like me, you got involved in this whole "internet" thing more or less by accident and somewhat randomly.In my case, I was hearing a lot about the "internet" and "blogging," and, never being very busy at work, set up my own blog -- this one!-- one day. I also did it because there are never very many good horror stories out there and all mine are better, but mostly it was random.There is a better way to run your hobby or business or life than random chance, you know. You could, say, investigate your options, really learn what's out there for you, engage an expert to help you set up your business, and run it right from day one.In fact, you could do all that right now with WebHostingChoice ("Your guide to web hosting.") WebHostingChoice, as their name says, can help you learn about and get set up with web hosting.When I first started this blog, I had no idea what web hosting was. I didn't know about domain names, hits, bandwidth, anything. I even actually bought a book --...
More About: Things

If you're going to die, what's the last thing you'd want to see?
2008-05-03 15:45:00
The Deal Part Five: If you were going to die, what's the last thing you'd want to see -- posted today!AfterDark features horror stories published in serial format. A new part is posted roughly about once per week. Want to submit your own artwork? Drop me a line at thetroublewithroy @ yahoo.com Want to get updates when I post stories? Do the same.The Stories:The Deal: Little Jake is tormented nightly by a demon, and his parents won't help. His brother might, but his brother is gone.You Know What Happens After DarkFreddy learns why we always close the eyes of the dead, and wishes that she hadn't.Eclipse Claudius was going to be the first man to ever walk on another planet. Now he's drifting through space alone. But he's got his memories...
More About: Thing

The Deal (Part Five)
2008-05-03 15:35:00
If you knew you were going to die in just one second, what would you want to be your last sight?Would you want it to be your mother?Would you want it to be a sunrise?Would you want it to be a bright blue sky full of clouds so puffy and near that you could pull them down and squish them in your hand like a sponge?Or would you want it to be a swirling tornado of jagged shapes, of tortured colors, of claws and fangs and pieces and scales and horns lit from within by a cold red light that was the exact color of a fire doused in blood?Jake screamed and screamed and screamed until he could feel wet flecks flying out of his mouth. He pushed himself back against the wall, pulling his blankets up and in front of him. His feet pedaled and scrambled and kicked and he screamed and his hands clenched against his chest and he closed his eyes but he still saw it or them or what it was still there and it was coming at him and he could feel its hot breath and he screamed.He was screaming Mom Mom Mom...
More About: Deal , Part

Taking a break
2008-04-20 19:33:00
Hi! Sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but real life (you know, that thing that keeps you from getting on the Internet) is taking over this week; I'll be too busy to post anything until Friday or Saturday -- April 25 or 26-- at the earliest.But in the meantime, why not browse around some of the older stuff? You could check out the hilarious stories on Thinking The Lions -- where you can meet the newest member of the family, "Frankencouch."There's always more to read here on The Best of Everything -- I bet I've got over 200 posts, and many of them don't even mention Dennis DeYoung.Or find out what is or is not a sport, as well as why you should know Owen Meany and my plans for one of my twin sons to grow up to be a lady golfer, over on Nonsportsmanlike Conduct.You can see those twin sons, and a lot of other Babies! and Pets! on Babies! Babies! Pets! Pets!; take this week to send in your own photos for that site -- Mark!-- and maybe you'll win the coveted year-end t-sh...
More About: Break , Taking