Monday, December 26, 2011

REEEEEEEJECTEEEED!

Wow, In less than a day they replied and let me know my story was crap. Well, that they were going to "pass on it" That's ok though, tonight I submitted it to Ideomancer, another e-zine. This one has a .59% acceptance rate, so I have more than a 99% chance of being rejected! I can't wait to see how they word this rejection, maybe I'll get a "not for us" or a "good, but not good enough."  That's all. Time to go watch SPARTICUS

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Ho ho ho

Merry Holidays internet. I just enjoyed the December 25 gifts. I got a small electric fryer, lots of plans are formulating for it. I just polished and sent off my first "serious" short story for publication. It's a fantasy story and I sent it to The Colored Lens, which is a pretty mainstream e zine which Duotrope, a popular online writer's resource, says has a 96% rejection rate. So it's probably going to get rejected, but I had to aim kind of high. If it gets published I only get paid $20, but to me It's more about doing it than the money. But the money is still pretty important. Now, what to fry...

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

How to take a great family vacation for less than $350

Hauled off a little over 500lbs of trash today. The guy dumping next to me threw out a perfectly good pallet, so I tossed it in the truck and lowered the weight that would be considered what I dumped to 480lbs. By the way, 500lbs or less is $12, and 500 to 1000lbs is $22, so I basically saved $12 for picking up that +/- 40lb pallet, which has a multitude of uses for a hillbilly like me. Writing: The Dry Spell has Came to an End is still pulling in views, I guess it's predominately positioned. Two more Yahoo! articles were published, one on a brief review of tech industry developments of 2011, which is crap, and How to take a great family vacation for less than $350, which was pretty good and REAL. I got into it and went over the word count, though that doesn't seem to matter. Also cooked some navy bean and kale soup last night, lots of gas today. Thought you(read ME) would like to know that.

Monday, December 19, 2011

I felt my baby to be kick last night and again today. Fun. She(or maybe he) is supposed to be out in about three months. Ran my 5k in a terrible 30min today, felt like crap the whole time. I think I still haven't recovered from my work weekend, then sleeping 12 hours and not having a real breakfast before I left may have had something to do with it. Did I mention I could't sleep this weekend? From Thursday morning to Sunday night I worked about 40hrs, ran some, and slept LESS THAN 10hrs, don't know why. I only worked 4 hrs Thursday, so I wasn't sleepy, but I don't know why I had trouble sleeping the other nights. I'm caught up now, though. I know this blog is pointless to others, but I enjoy it. Thought I should state that.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Back (to stay?)

Sleepy.... Sorry about the lapse, I've been lazy...errr busy. I wrote a realish thing called The Modern Economy May Require New Retirement Directions, A thing about Supreme Court Justice Misconduct, Three Ways to Renovate your Kitchen This Winter, which was real, a thing on Orange Bowl Travel Packages, a thing on Basketball Bama Merchandise, which was soulless along with one or two just like it(too tired to figure out which ones) and I got paid a few bucks for each. Yahoo! Associated Content became Yahoo! Voices and I had to change ALL OF MY LINKS here and everywhere else. Crap. I monetized my you tube as well. So tiered. FITNESS  I'm back up to 5 mi. running and my current 5k is a weak 29min. I'm good for pull ups 12, 10, 10, 8, 8 or so and two weeks ago I banged out 60 push ups in a row with kind of crappy form. I recently tried my buddies p90x yoga and liked it. My dogs keep rotating. As one leaves another shows up. Right now I have three puppies, one alpha female and two males. Recently fixed my messed up drawer by putting a screw in the rail to keep it from sliding in too far and tearing it apart. I suppose that's all for now. I hope to keep up with my updates better in the future, if only for myself. So sleepy, working lots of doubles and mornings....

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Hillbilly Living becomes the King's Journal but just for the Author

Lots of good exercise today. Did I mention that I work out? Did back and biceps, then abs, then ran. Saw my 20 week baby on ultrasound this morning too. WOW. I'm gonna have a kid. Good thing I have this lucrative writing thing going on, huh? That was a joke. Yahoo! published my "real talk" christmas poem called Christmas is Coming and You Can't Hide. Then they published a half real political piece called Is it Time for America to Have a Third Party Presidential Candidate? Yahoo! is so great. It pays me roughly half of minimum wage to write opinion pieces that almost nobody reads. I can't complain, though, as this blog pays me nothing and I'm the only one who reads it. It's kind of like a having a diary that you can't close or even hide. That sounds kind of sissy like. Let's call it a "Journal" or better yet the "Captain's log".Well, maybe not. I'm not a captain. But I am the master of my domain, so how about the "MASTER'S LOG" no, that sounds kind of....funny. As the only man on the hill I live on I guess that makes me the king of my hill.  King's log..no no no.......ah.  This blog will here now and ever after be referred to in my mind as the KING'S JOURNAL.
I've decided to cut back on the Hubpages as the Yahoo! Associated Content seems to be where it's at. I've been writing a bit since the last post. I did a haiku called A Change to Them a Constant,  a cinquain called Wide Open Sky, a funny story based on a joke called Williams Decision and an opinion piece on what I thought about Mississippi's proposed  Personhood Amendment.  Also, I banged out a list of Ice Fishing gear and a list of Ice Fishing lingo just to remind everyone that I don't have a soul and that I sold out before I started. And there's more commercial writing to come, too. BTW the no shave November article has only been holding at about 50 per day.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Finally managed to post my Garmin 255WT review for free. I also banged out a piece of poetry . Sorry but I'm sleepy now. Later.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

desolation

Wrote a short story, "What Came Was Desolation" for the Hubpages art contest. Thought it needed more polishing, but it was fun to write...until 4am. The wife wasn't too happy, but that's life.

Also wrote, published, and got paid for an article on making homemade wooden snowshoes, a subject I don't really know well, and one on Jim Morrison's poetry, which I know pretty well. My product review on my GPS has been rejected 3 times and now they are telling me that it's not eligible for up-front payment, so I'll just publish it for performance. Oh well. At least my wife likes video games now: I got her hooked on Angry Birds. Life is good.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

How long till overpopulation?

Took my wife to the doctor for a prenatal checkup today. With a baby on the way it's a good time to think about the increasing population, which I wrote an article on at Associated Content. It's called "How long will there be enough to go around?" Oh, by the way the Lego Man experiment didn't go so well, but the No Shave November page is pulling in a lot of views. More to come.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Quickly here. I wrote an overview of No-Shave November last night. I'm thinking about doing it. Not that I have much of a beard. OK, gotta go.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Wrote even more hubs, one on Monumento a la Revolucion and one on diarrhea. Yeah, I know. I also wrote a product review for my GPS, but it got rejected because I didn't cite my sources...kind of ridiculous as I didn't have any quotes. I redid it and resubmitted it, hopefully it will get accepted this time. I was lined up to start writing reviews and opinions on telenovelas with my wife, I was having correspondence with a REAL person who worked for Yahoo!, and the show we were going to write about suddenly had it's season finale. What crap.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Lego Man experiment

I decided to write a hub on the Giant Lego Man which was found on a Florida beach. His story went viral, and though it will be cooled down by the time my hub gets indexed on Google, I want to see how many views it pulls in. I tried to write the story in an "Evergreen" manner, though this kind of thing will be out of the public interest pretty soon, so who knows.
Yummy looking, huh? I stole this recipe for squash blossom quesadillas from my in-laws while in Mexico, and of course made a hub out of it. Then I drank some beer. That's about all I have to say about that.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Lemon in a window, Lemon Tree Song


Had a lemony day today. Wrote a hub on The Lemon Tree song as an experiment to test the validity of the Google Adwords tool. We'll see.  I also wrote a short story based on a writing exercise about the main character looking at a lemon in a window sill called "Lemon in a Window". I need to find better things to do with my time.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Passport

I remembered how lost and angry I felt when I went through the process of getting a US passport before my trip and decided to write a guide for the other unfortunate souls who want or need to cross one of invisible lines surrounding us, aka leave the country.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Mexico

I'm baaaaaaack! Been in MEXICO for the last 5 weeks, came back at night and went right back to work the next day. I would say sorry for the delay, but nobody is reading this. Wrote a poem for the hell of it. Here is the link if you are interested. Mexico was great by the way. I recommend learning Spanish and visiting. I'm not going to bother trying to give an account of my trip as it would take all day just to write the highlights, so just visit there yourself if you get the chance.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Busy, busy, busy. I've been sleeping in a lot lately, but have a ton of stuff to do. I wrote this top ten beer list and a haiku just to see if it got any hits. That's about it.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Pork Ribs and Podcasts

It finally rained here, for two days. I'ts nice and cool also. I wrote this pork rib recipe and this list of fiction podcasts and worked. Took the wife to the pregnancy place and got a sonogram. WOW there's a little freak with a giant head in my wife's belly and it's half ME! One of the coolest experiences I've ever had..

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Some good reasons not to smoke

I posted this short article on how to quit smoking last night and today found myself thinking of some of the ways I'm better off now that I have quit. Here's a list, in no particular order. If you think of more put them in the comments.

more energy-I've picked up running and exercise

more willpower/determination-see above+I get a lot more done

less chance of cancer

more money

the ability to stay indoors/occupied for more than an hour at a time-no more smoke breaks

more testosterone-smoking inhibits testosterone production in men, lowering sex drive and overall masculinity (I understand non-smoking women also have gender specific benefits, see Google)

vast improvements in the auto immune system-no colds, sore throats, or coughs, and only one time with a runny nose in a year.

better smelling breath

whiter teeth

I can stay at home for a few days-no need to go to the store for smokes (I live in the country)

no need to leave a conversation/movie/dinner/ect. for a smoke break

more endurance/stamina

overall empowerment-Since defeating cigarettes I have been gaining the above benefits and continuing to get stronger, faster, and tougher, both physically and mentally. I see most people/obstacles/tasks  that were imposing before in a new light that shows them as they are, conquerable.

Disadvantages: More likely to strangle someone, having a lighter in your pocket comes in handy sometimes.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Wrote something else

I've spent a pretty large part of my life in the restaurant business, and I encounter the same frustrations again and again, so I wrote a list last night.of complaints against the people who pay my bills, the customers. I feel that people wouldn't do these things if they knew they were so irritating, so hopefully this will get the word out.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

I wrote something

Posted a hub detailing how to make my awesome banana bread, of which there is only one slice left, last night. Nothing else to note.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The backward-assed system

I did some research today and found out that I won't qualify for medicaid for my wife's birth, even though the total household income is less than $300 per week and I have no insurance. Why? Because I denied myself immediate gratification and saved what little scraps of money I have. I drive a beat up 17 year old Saturn and eat Great Value. I have never got more than $700 back on a tax return, hell , I had to pay the feds the last two years. I've been putting money back from my low-lower class income for a few years to retire on one day and now that money is too large of an asset (it's not even enough to buy a new car) to qualify for medicaid. If I had been stupid and squandered my money the government would help me, but now I will have to dip into my hard-earned(janitor, cook,carpenter, factory production work) money to pay to have a baby while the people      earning the same as me or not working at all who are making payments on brand new cars and using smart phones send the government the bill. There goes my those years of savings. Sure, I could move the money to a relatives name and lie, but that would make me no better than all the lazy pieces of shit in the world. I generally take the high road in life, and though it's bound to suck as it usually does, that's what i'm going to do with this, too. I don't believe in divine retribution, the lazy people are probably making the smarter decision, but I still have my dignity.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

My wife is officially knocked up

I took the wife for an official pregnancy test today. She failed, showing positive for baby in her system. Going back next week for an ultrasound. Early in the spring and then summer I saw some weeds that looked interesting and cut around them. Now I have three specimen patches growing in my yard: white morning glories, maypops (purple passion flowers) and wild mint. I took some photos of the latter two and wrote articles on them on hubpages, hence the links. I also baked some banana bread, expect an article on that soon. Good times.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Pear wine

I went down to see my folks today. The old pear tree beside the house was sagging with fruit. I picked a bag to eat, then picked through the pears on the ground and got another bag for wine. The pears are what my mom describes as "for canning, not for eating" but I like to eat them anyway. When i got home i chopped up the wine pears(about 1 gallon) and put them in a plastic bucket with two pounds of sugar and some raisins, then covered them with another gallon of boiling water. I stuck the top on and set up the air lock. Tomorrow I will add the yeast. I've written a detailed procedure at http://rickcombe.hubpages.com/hub/Easy-homemade-pear-wine-recipe. I was drinking some of my homemade apple wine while I wrote it, I hope it's readable.

Hello Internet

Hello everybody, i'm Rick Combe. I'm a jack of all trades in my mind and a redneck by definition. I've accumulated a pretty good bit of know-how being poor and what I don't know I figure out as I go. I've created this blog to share my experience and experiences with others in hopes of contributing to the greater knowledge. And to ramble.