Tag Archives: entertainment

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

April 10, 2012 D.A. Adams Leave a comment

Dear sons, it makes me so proud to know both of you are embracing reading. I can’t stress enough how valuable and healthy this skill can be in your lives. Reading exercises your brain in a way nothing else can, which improves your intelligence, helps you retain more knowledge, and keeps you sharper longer. Reading is one of the best ways to learn new skills and self-educate, both of which can go a long way to achieving the self-sufficiency I’ve stressed to you before. Being literate empowers you in more ways than I can even begin to express. The older you get, the more you will be grateful for learning this skill and embracing it.

Reading is also fun. There’s not much more entertaining than diving into a new world and meeting new characters in a well-written story. If you read good books, you will rarely be bored, and your imaginations will grow immeasurably. Some of my fondest memories from childhood involve reading books, and much of what has shaped me into the man I am today came from the pleasures of reading. There’s nothing wrong with playing video games and watching shows/movies, but reading is a much better, much more beneficial, and much healthier activity.

One day soon, you’ll be old enough to read my books, and that thought both fills me with pride and terrifies me. If you love the stories, of course, I’ll be delighted, but if you don’t, I’m not sure how I’ll feel. I wrote them for you, hoping to share a heroic tale that would inspire you, and I care more about your approval than anybody else’s. So when the day comes when you do begin reading them, I’ll be more nervous than with any other reader. All I ask of you are two things: please be honest with me, and please be gentle.

Enjoy reading, guys. You have both entered into a pastime that can change and enrich your lives forever. You make me proud that you both enjoy learning so much and that you are beginning to absorb books. I promise you I will provide you with as many as I can find, and you will have an endless source of entertainment and education. I love you, boys.

Humor

Primary Ramblings

April 4, 2012 D.A. Adams 1 Comment

BREAKING NEWS: Today, millions of Republicans enter walk-in clinics to request anti-depressants as they begin to accept Mitt Romney will be their nominee for president.

“Well, I for one was hoping for someone who’s actually a conservative,” says Joseph Cartwright III, conservative talk-radio host and active blogger, as he nursed a bottle of double-malt scotch. “Romney just doesn’t seem to hate enough sub-groups for my taste. He’s so wishy-washy on gays, abortion, and minorities. We need leadership with a deeply-rooted animosity towards these fringes if we’re ever going to get back to the good old days. At least Romney seems to hate the average American, so that’s something to work with, I guess. Also, he’s white, so that’s an upgrade.”

Other Republicans, especially Tea Party members, are more scathing.

“I’m just ordnary folk,” claims Cletus McOnetooth, after crushing a beer can on his forehead. “I want pollytishuns like me running this here country. Like Sarah Palin. Where’d she go? I don’t know the difference between North and South Korea, either, so she’s my kind of girl. Give me guns and Bibles, not this Ivy League sissy. I ain’t voting for nobody till she’s back in the race. I will give him this, at least he’s white, even if he is a Yankee.”

“Now that Romney is almost guaranteed the nomination,” states Dr. Fullofshitz of Fox News. “Our data show that Republicans are 97.8% fully supporting him. We at Fox News have been behind Romney all along because we’ve recognized his whiteness from day one.”

“Dr. Fullofshitz is full of shit,” counters Dr. Lottastatz of the Center for Researching Research. “The data to which he’s referring shows that 97.8% of Republicans are begrudgingly accepting Romney despite prior affinities for Cain, Paul, Bachmann, and Santorum, and nearly 75% of those Republicans gauge their feelings for Romney as ‘Lukewarm’ at best. Where do they get this bullshit?”

“Dr. Lottastatz is clearly a socialist,” retorts Dr. Fullofshitz. “He’s part of the liberal elite who want to muddle simple facts with sophisticated nuances to confuse the average voter. The Republican Party and Fox News fully endorse Mitt Romney’s whiteness.”

However, the mood at Romney’s headquarters can be described as joyously optimistic.

“The campaign clearly has some strong momentum now these pesky ‘other’ nominees have been out-spent to the point of oblivion,” states an anonymous insider of the Romney campaign. “We’re now going to rally the conservative base and appeal to independents by spending millions of dollars on advertising that gets to the core of our message. Here let me show you.”

With that he held up the prototype for the campaign’s general election poster:

MITT ROMNEY: AT LEAST I’M WHITE

Editor’s Note: This entry in no way implies that the Tea Party and/or the Republican Party dislike President Obama based solely on the issue of race. Any inference of that on your part indicates that you, in-fact, are a reverse-racist with clear ties to the former Soviet Union and were born from a test-tube.

General Posts

Monday Afternoon Ramblings

March 19, 2012 D.A. Adams 2 Comments

FantaSciCon was a blast. I had one of the best all around convention weekends of my career, from meeting new friends to selling a few books to simply relaxing. A very special thanks to Dutch and Mickey for having me down, and an even bigger thanks to everyone who was there. What the crowd lacked in quantity, it more than made up for in quality, and it’s always reinvigorating to be surrounding by intelligent, creative, passionate people who know so much more about so many things than I do. Con weekends always humble me in the best possible way by reminding me that this world is full of amazing people.

I will admit that on Friday, I was a little worried about the weekend because the crowd was pretty small, but as the weekend progressed and I got to have long, detailed discussions with the majority of the people there, I recognized that the intimacy of the show was more important than the volume. More than once, I’ve left much larger shows feeling as if I had barely been noticed by the crowd, but as I went around Sunday afternoon saying my good byes, I realized that virtually everyone there had at least learned my name. Dutch and Mickey both expressed that I had been a good guest and was welcome back to either of their two shows any time I wanted. To me, that’s more important than making a small splash at a huge show.

Other than Dutch and Mickey, I don’t want to mention anyone by name for fear of leaving someone out, but if you and I spent more than two minutes engaged in conversation this weekend, please know that I enjoyed getting to know you. Your stories and perspectives inspired me, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have gotten to know you, whether for the first time or in more depth than before. I’m also grateful that all of you so graciously accepted me into the “family.” This weekend will always have a special place in my heart as one of the brightest spots of my career, and you people made this experience more meaningful to me than even attending Dragon*Con as a guest author. There, I was just another face in the crowd. Here, I was one of you, and that means so much more.

One of the coolest things that happened to me personally was finding someone who had bought a copy of Brotherhood six years ago in Chattanooga. He recognized the name of the book and remembered reading it. More importantly, he liked it enough to buy books two and three. Most importantly, he and I got to sit and talk for several hours over the course of the weekend, and he shared with me much of his passion and genius for mechanical engineering. That’s an example of what I meant before about being humbled. We writers are often guilty of believing ourselves smarter than everyone else, but getting to listen to someone who is truly gifted with a tangible skill talk in detail about his work reminded me that in the grand scheme of things, I’m just a dude who tells stories. And this weekend, I needed to be reminded that I’m just a guy with pain and difficulties and struggles, the same as everyone else in this world.