I decided it was time to change up the comics on my cubicle wall so I put up the first 7 issues of Dark Horse's Conan. The Joe Linsner covers are awesome. I actually had to skip issue #2 because the Frost Giant's Daughter cover is a little too risque for the office. So I have #1, #0, then #3-#7 on the wall
Speaking of things nerdly, nobody has been buying my comics or toys on eBay for the past few months, but here's a tribute to the many treasures that I have said goodbye to over the past couple of years...
Cul De Sac / Richard Thompson
While looking for a new calendar and hoping for a Cul De Sac desk calendar to adorn my cubicle (like the one I had several years ago), I discovered that Richard Thompson, the artist of Cul de Sac (that has sadly never been published in a local newspaper), died in July of last year. Richard Thompson was a guest at ComicCon many years ago, which is where I discovered and fell in love with his wacky world. I'm part Petey.
While I'm not feeling a Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams level of loss, I am sad. And confused. The Cul De Sac comic strips have continued appearing online since he stopped creating them on September 23, 2012 (it had a five-year run). You would probably think I would have noticed the repeats, but maybe that's part of this strip's greatness. The humor is so well-crafted that it's always funny, even if it does feel familiar. The strip linked above was posted on December 29, but when I recently looked more closely at the date in the comic itself and realized it was from 2008.
Dave!, Marc Richard
I was contacted by another author trying to generate some positive feedback for one of his books. The author in this case was Marc Richard, and the book was Dave! (the first trilogy). I was told that my review of one of Terry Pratchett's books brought me to his attention. The book was described by the author thus: "It has aliens, politics, and lots of humor. It has been called Douglas Adams meets South Park, or If Christopher Moore had a job at the Cartoon Network writing for Adult Swim."
The back cover of the book provides this glimpse into the book's plot:
Can a horde of nobodies save the world?
Starlet Richter is your typical transgender woman living in the good ol' U.S of A.
The country is in ruins after President Gibson enshrouds it in his wall, and seals it off from the outside world.
After years of watching the place fall apart, she decides it's time to do something about it. She's going to help tear down that wall!
Eric Tisdsale is Starlet's long-lost love.
He's making a pretty mundane living as a pool shark, until one phone call changes everything.
He's asked to join the Invaders, a secret society led by a charismatic and flawlessly handsome dude named Dave.
Their mission: destroy the forces in D.C. and take the country back.
Both have their plans.
Both are in danger.
Will they save each other? Themselves? The country?
How about when they discover the president is not actually human, and there may be more of his kind hiding among us?
DAVE! is a science fiction comedy that features fast-paced action, pie-throwing clowns, nudists, and lots and lots of aliens.
Equal parts Hitchhiker's Guide and Coen Brothers, this series will have you laughing your way through the apocalypse!
The Douglas Adams/Hitchhiker's Guide comparison immediately piqued my interest. I thought the book's summary on Amazon sounded more like Billy Pilgrim's misadventures in Slaughterhouse Five than Arthur Dent's romp through the Galaxy, but I went through a Vonnegut phase many moons ago and read everything by Vonnegut I could find, so that didn't dampen my enthusiasm.
Sadly, the book wasn't all that I'd hoped it might be. It started out a little bit weird (email correspondence between many of the book's characters - including the author himself, who thought it would be fun to plug himself several times in the book) before becoming less weird, yet no more well-written. It didn't help that the story is a liberal's vision of the absolute worst-case scenario for the United States of 'Merica. I don't know if he came up with the story when Donald Trump ran for president in 2012 or if the Trump-then-Mel-Gibson presidency idea was inspired from the Donald's second, more successful, attempt to become president in 2016, or if he's just a little bit psychic and dreamed the story up well before the Donald ever expressed any interest in the Presidency. Prescience aside, there's not much here. Maybe I'm just not the demographic the book is shooting for (old heterosexual white guy), but I found few redeeming qualities in the book.
I'm not one to turn my nose up at a good story with aliens, conspiracy theories, underground rebellions against a tyrannical government, and just a little bit of dystopian mayhem thrown in for good measure. And this book did include all of the above. Plus an overabundance of profanity. And I do mean overabundance. Man, there were a lot of words starting with the letter "F" in this book. And they were pretty much all the same word. With four letters. In addition to the profanity, it also excluded anything resembling a well-told story. The author seemed to be much more interested in trying to shock the reader with left-wing stereotypes than trying to paint a picture with his words. If this is what the future holds from millennial authors, I'm glad I already have a full library of classics to choose from.
On the positive side, the book was pretty well-edited. There were only a few errors that crept into the text.
In summary, while I'm not telling you not to read this book, I'm definitely not suggesting you should.
Warp, Lev Grossman
Immediately after finishing Dave!, I quickly started Warp to cleanse my mental palate. Warp is one of the few non-Magicians books I'm aware of by Lev Grossman (the only other one I've read/know of is Codex). It's as well-written as one would expect from the author of The Magicians. A quick, enjoyable read.
If you were fond of The Catcher in the Rye in High School (as I was), I have some good news for you. Holden Caulfield is back....kinda. This story takes place 50 years later, the protagonist's name is Hollis, and he's an unemployed college graduate with too much time on his hands. Hollis will not only seem familiar to those of us who grew up with Holden Caulfield, but also to those of us who have a affinity for Albert Camus's Mersault. And there's maybe just a little bit of Quentin Coldwater in Hollis, too. The story takes place in Boston and as someone who has spent no time in either New York City or Boston, Boston feels pretty much interchangeable with New York to me. I was considering blathering on about Hollis's characteristics that resemble Holden's, Mersault's, and Quentin's, but I figure nobody will care and even I'm beginning to lose interest in that topic...
One thing about the book that's both interesting and just a little bit distracting is the barrage of book/TV/movie quotes and flashbacks (I think) interspersed in the text. One of the chapters ends with a whole scene from Star Trek The Next Generation, complete with dialogue from Data, Picard, Crusher, and Troi. I'm not sure if these are glimpses into a slightly schizophrenic brain that won't stay anchored in reality, or if this was just Hollis's way of relating the world around him to the fictional worlds he lived in (very Quentin-like, if that's the case), or if maybe this was just a literary device used by the author to stretch out and liven up the prose. I guess that's left for the reader to decide.
Here is an example of what I'm referring to (the gray text is the book quote/TV quote/movie quote/flashback).
The bell rang, and the doors opened directly onto the office anteroom: apparently the company owned the whole floor. It was decorated like an old-fashioned cloakroom, with wood paneling and an umbrella stand. He walked through it into a reception area, which was painted a stylish, soothing rose color. The receptionist, a young woman with brown hair, looked up when he came in.
I am an android. Doctor. I am incapable of experiencing fear.
She was sitting on an uncomfortable-looking orthopedic chair with no back, wearing a headset phone. "Can I help you?" she said.
Why, Mr. Kessler is one of our most valuable clients.
Hollis cleared his throat.
"I'm looking for Eileen Cavanaugh."
"I'll see if she's free," said the woman,
She switched to an intercom and politely lowered her voice.
"Darcy? ls Eileen there? There's someone out here to see her."
She listened for an answer, then looked back up at Hollis.
"Your name?" she said.
Call me Ishmael.
He cleared his throat.
"Scotty."
She waited For a moment for Hollis to give a last name, but when he didn't she just said "Scotty" into the headset, then stopped and listened again, tapping her pen.
And another.
...
in a tuxedo was doing tricks with ropes and knots in the middle of a ring of spectators. The peripheral highway that ran along the docks came up suddenly, only a block past the market. There was nowhere to cross it legally, but he waited on the shoulder for a while for a break in traffic, surrounded by broken glass and black, charred-looking blowout pads.
"You can't ride back in the rain, Hollis. Wait a few minutes."
"l can't exactly stay here. can I?" he said bitterly. "Anyway. it's not raining anymore."
"Yes, it is."
"No, it isn't."
Eileen went over to the window and pulled up the blinds. They looked out through the black bars of the fire escape. Night was falling.
"Is it?" said Hollis. "I can't really tell."
"l guess I can't tell either."
They listened for the sound of rain.
Anyway," she said. "Take an umbrella."
The road cleared for a minute. He jogged across a few lanes of black asphalt worn shiny with age, jumped over a guardrail, and suddenly he was at the docks. Two enormous splintery gray timber wharfs jutted out into the harbor in front of him. The New England Aquarium stood at the end of them, on a double row of massive concrete pilings.
A scum of Foam and floating trash bobbed around the base of the pilings, but farther out in the main harbor the water was blue and clean. The air was chilly. Seagulls wheeled and cried overhead. Hollis could see as far as Logan Airport on the far side of the bay, where every couple of minutes another plane took off or landed, weirdly out of sync with the roar of its engine because of the time...
The story ended a little more abruptly than I would have liked. Xanthe is still an enigma to me, the repercussions of Peters's peer pressure were left unexplored (sending the barely-ever-there Mersault to prison was the point of The Stranger, after all), and I wanted to know more about Eileen. But maybe that's all coming in Warp II: The Wrath of Caulfield.
One last thing before I go - a couple more doodles. They're not great, but they're pretty good. As always, the originals looked much cooler than these scans. But whatcha gonna do?
I still haven't finished re-reading The Magicians, but season 2 of The Magicians starts on SyFy in a few days so I guess I better get back to it so I can compare the original to the TV version with more authority. So far, everything I remember as being wrong when watching the TV version has been pretty-much spot on, though.
This will probably be my last mention of the Happy-Happy Fun World of Harry Potter. So no more Pottertopia logo after this post. Back to boring old Badbartopia...
The wife and I took our final trip to Harry Potterland the first week of December, expecting to see Potterville all decked out in Christmas trees, holly, lights, and all manners of Christmassy goodness. Universal Studios itself was pretty well decorated (the Dr. Seuss tree was really cool), but there wasn't a single Christmas decoration in Hogsmeade. Not a sausage. Speaking of sausages, we also didn't bother eating at the Three Broomsticks on this visit. I think the lack-of-Christmas-disappointment ruined our appetites. So any temptation we may have had to return the next week (the final week that our passes were active) or to renew our passes for 2017 was removed. We didn't even bother with Butterbeer on this visit, though I did finally get a chocolate frog (they come in milk chocolate only...yuck) with a wizard card before we left. It was Helga Hufflepuff, sadly. I was hoping for Dumbledore. On the way out of the park, I also picked up some bottled butterbeer from the gigantic - and way-overpriced - Sugar store in the Downtown Universal Studios. I've had the bottled stuff before and found it pretty mediocre, but I think they must have adjusted their recipe because it tasted a lot more like the real thing than I remembered.
We also rode the Flight of the Hippogriff mini-coaster for the first time since our initial visit before Harry Potterville was officially opened to the pubic, and the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride inside Hogwarts. And now, the big news for those of you who didn't have a chance to visit Pottertland before the end of 2016 - the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride inside Hogwarts has been modified from a very cool 3D ride to the same ride minus the 3D. The physical characteristics of the ride remain unchanged...but there's a lot more blank space visible inside the ride now (it's the same space, you just didn't see it before) and it feels less "real" than it did with the sweet 3D quidditch goggles that had to be worn when the ride's video interaction was all 3D.
Here are a few photos (a couple are things I hadn't taken a photo of previously, but most are the same old buildings, crowds, etc). There are also a few photos of Christmas decorations around the non-Potter parts of Universal Studios. And a couple of the Jurassic Park area - the ride was closed for renovations, so we didn't go on the ride in 2016 even though I remember it fondly from years ago. And we stuck around after dark for the first time with these passes. So some of the photos are from after dark, which adds a whole new perspective (especially in Potterland).
Potterland treats
Universal Studio Christmas decorations (and other nighttime lights)
Jurassic Park (the ride was closed, so this is all I got)
Potterland - for the last time
Also, the crowd-forecast calendar was reasonably accurate for the day we attended. It was supposed to be a ghost town, and generally was. Lines were all super short, anyway, even if there were quite a few people there. We actually stayed until after dark and saw the lights turn on inside Hogwarts and around Hogsmeade, which was pretty sweet.
Here are a couple of recent doodles. Enjoy.
I had also planned to mention a couple of other things, but all this Harry Potter stuff has taken the wind out of my sails. So next time...
I made my final visit to Harry Potterland last week (final for the year, anyway, and probably for several years - that traffic in L.A. is a killer), but I still need to go through all the photos to see if I managed to take any worth seeing. I also have some sad news for anyone who hasn't had a chance to attend the park yet. But more about that a little later. For now, you get another installment of Bart Blathers aBout Books!
Not Taco Bell material
If you're a fan of Adam Carolla's angry old white guy schtick and hearing him point out how he's surrounded by narcissistic idiots, then Not Taco Bell Material is the book for you. I read this one several months ago, but just haven't bothered to say anything about it because it's an older book and...I'm lazy. A secondary title for the book could have been Places to Find Adam's DNA, as the book details his progression from one rathole to the next until he finally becomes successful and starts buying houses in the ritzy part of LA. The stories about his moves around LA (that's Los Angeles, not Louisiana) are intertwined with the misadventures of a guy who no one ever thought would make it anywhere, especially the management at Taco Bell, who wouldn't even let him make burritos.
One of the many colorful stories in the book is tangentially about Beth Ringwald, Molly Ringwald's hotter older sister. And just so you know, I didn't inadvertently make this a giant run-on paragraph. that's how it appears in the book.
One hot day in July I was out on a delivery run in the liquor store's station wagon up in what we referred to as Hebrew Heights. I was passing the Weez's cousin Michelle's house, so I decided to stop in. She was a good friend of mine and I had some time to kill. I knocked on the door and it just swung open. Like the house was haunted. I heard music coming from inside. So I stepped into the entryway and called her name a couple of times. There was no reply. The house was laid out like the letter C with a little grassy area in the middle. As I was walking through I looked out the window into the courtyard area and saw two completely hot and completely naked chicks sunbathing. I knew them from high school. One of them was The Weez's cousin and the other was Beth, Molly Ringwald's sister, a girl I'd had a crush on for a while. Unfortunately, from my angle all I could see was that they were naked and not much else. So I crept around to the back of the house to get a better view from the master bedroom. I climbed up on Michelle's mom's dresser to get a view from an upper window. Unfortunately, all I saw was half an ass cheek as they walked into the house and slid the door closed behind them. I was cut off: There was no way to the front door and no back door to get to. I was hoping they were going to walk in for a drink and walk back out, but they didn't. I was trapped like a rat with a boner. So all I could do was hide in the closet. I couldn't just walk out of there - that would make me seem like a weird perv who broke in as opposed to a lucky perv who happened to catch them at just the right moment. So from the closet I could hear them talking about needing to take a shower. Fortunately not together: That would have blown my mind and I would have passed out in the closet because all the blood would have left my brain and gone to my wang. Beth said she would take the first shower and got in, but I was still trapped in the closet because Michelle was wandering around God knows where and I could have easily run into her. At a certain point I decided to take my chances and make a break for it. I was supposed to be on a fifteen-minute liquor delivery and I'd been gone almost an hour at that point. I slowly crept out of the closet, snuck down the hall, and peeked around a corner and saw that she was still naked in the kitchen, on the phone, with her back turned to me. I had about eighteen feet of carpet to cover, then a hard left to freedom. I went like a blitzing linebacker shooting the B-gap. I was two steps away from being in the clear when she spun around and spotted me. She dropped the phone and started screaming. So I started screaming, too, and pretended like I didn't know what the hell was going on. I sprinted out of the house, jumped into the car, and sped off. It was all very innocent, but it was such a traumatic experience that to this day I can barely beat off to it.
There are also quite a few photos of places/people throughout the book, one of which is this photo of Chris and Ray, who have been big parts of Adam's life (generally in a negative sense). There's a story about the two girls in the photo and the jealous violence that ensues.
I genuinely laughed out loud several times as I was reading this book, so if profanity and stories that are intended for an adult audience don't offend you, you'll probably enjoy it, too.
I didn't read President Me right after Not Taco Bell Material, but I'm going to talk about it next anyway. If I had already read Daddy, Stop Talking (it's on my shelf to be read sometime in the near future), I would probably have talked about that one after President Me.
President Me
If you're anything like me, you've pontificated about "If I was King/President/Galactic Emperor, this is what I'd do..." Well, Adam Carolla complains about the things that annoy him on his podcasts every day and wrote a book about what he'd change. This is another book full of stories about narcissistic idiots and the wanton destruction of the little puds growing up in this screwed up society crafted by the dope smoking hippies who came out of the 60's. And it also offers solutions of what can and should be done to right the ship. Case in point...
Voter ID Laws
I'm constantly accused of being a racist. One of the reasons is because I am. Also I'm completely for so-called voter suppression. I don't think asking someone to produce a valid ID at the polls is a hate crime. I understand that yes, there are going to be more minorities who can't produce ID, and yes, the people pushing this rule are always Republican trying to keep people who aren't voting for them away, but these motives aside, it's still a good idea. I'm not into "big government" but I do think post-9/11, anyone should be able to produce a government-issued photo ID when requested. This is compulsory. This is the bare minimum. Whether you're driving a Maserati or a tractor, if you get pulled over you need to show it to the cop. What can you do without an ID nowadays? Not much. You can't get a credit card, you can't get through airport security, and you can't check a book out of the fucking library. Why should you be able to vote?
And who's the racist here? No one said all black people need to have ID. It's not a racial issue. The people making it a racial issue are the ones who are saying or, more accurately, thinking but not having the balls to say about those who don't have ID, "They're not up to the challenge of securing a.n ID. They're not capable of completing the simple task the rest of us accomplished as teenagers." Good job, asswipes. Way to help them feel helpless. Why not demand something from people and have them rise to the occasion? I don't think standing in line at the DMV for an hour and getting your picture taken is too tall an order. Whether you're black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, I think that if you can't get it together to obtain photo ID, we don't need your vote. Your ID doesn't matter, it's your IQ I'm worried about.
I'll take it a step further. As president, I'm directing the Federal Election Commission to require not only ID at the polls, but also a recent pay stub. If you're on welfare, you're not contributing to the economy. So why should you get to vote? You're just going to vote to get more Free shit anyway.
But while I want all voters to have ID, I don't want the candidates to be identified. From now on, all voting will be blind voting. When you step in the voting booth you'll just see a list of positions on issues. No names, party affiliations, or pictures. We do way too much voting based on "he looks like me" and "her last name sounds like mine" in this country.
If that didn't make you chuckle at least once, this may not be the book for you.
Amongst the many photos and other imagery in the book is this photo taken inside an elevator in LA. Every bathroom, restaurant, hallway looks just like this all throughout California. it's enough to make you hate everyone.
There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in this book, but if you're a grumpy old curmudgeon (as I am), you'll find plenty of material to make you wave your impotent, wrinkled old fist in the air about. If there wasn't any profanity and maybe a little less "adult" material, this is a book I would encourage my kids to read.
And now for something completely different from Carolla, which is funny, because it's a book Carolla himself would never read (well, he doesn't actually ever "read" books)...
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
When I saw this hardcover on the shelves of the bookstore (let's be honest - I saw it first at Target), I thought it sounded familiar, but I didn't remember having read this actual collection of Hedge Knight stories (though I did vaguely remember Hedge Knight comics from quite a few years back). So I spent a little time on the Google (that's what we old people call Google) and realized that I had read at least one of the stories in another collection of short stories called Legends II (which I purchased because it contained a Neil Gaiman story). I even very briefly mentioned it here. There was a Legends I that contained the first of these stories, but I didn't ever pick that one up or read it. The third story, The Mystery Knight, was also in a collection of short stories I have never read.
Here's an excerpt from one of the more defining moment's of Dunk's character. And it also shows that members of the Targaryen family line were just as horrible then as they were ninety years later in the events of A Game of Thrones.
"Ser! Ser Duncan!" Egg burst in panting. His hood had fallen back, and the light from the brazier shone in his big dark eyes. "You have to run, he's hurting her!"
Dunk lurched to his feet, confused. "Hurting? Who?"
"Aerion!" the boy shouting. "He's hurting her. The puppet girl. Hurry." Whirling, he darted back out into the night.
Dunk made to follow, but Raymun caught his arm. "Ser Duncan. Aerion, he said. A prince of the blood. Be careful."
It was good counsel, he knew. The old man would have said the same. But he could not listen. He wrenched free of Raymun's hand and shouldered his way out of the pavilion. He could hear shouting off in the direction of the merchants' row. Egg was almost out of sight. Dunk ran after him. His legs were long and the boy's short; he quickly closed the distance.
A wall of watchers had gathered around the puppeteers. Dunk shouldered through them, ignoring their curses. A man-?at-?arms in the royal livery stepped up to block him. Dunk put a big band on his chest and shoved, sending the man flailing backward to sprawl on his arse in the dirt. The puppeteer's stall had been knocked on its side. The fat Dornishwoman was on the ground weeping. One man-?at-?arms was dangling the puppets of Florian and Jonquil from his hands as another set them afire with a torch. Three more men were opening chests, spilling more puppets on the ground and stamping on them. The dragon puppet was scattered all about them, a broken wing here, its head there, its tail in three pieces. And in the midst of it all stood Prince Aerion, resplendent in a red velvet doublet with long dagged sleeves, twisting Tanselle's arm in both hands. She was on her knees, pleading with him. Aerion ignored her. He forced open her hand and seized one of her fingers. Dunk stood there stupidly, not quite believing what he saw. Then he heard a crack, and Tanselle screamed. One of Aerion's men tried to grab him, and went flying. Three long strides, then Dunk grabbed the prince's shoulder and wrenched him around hard. His sword and dagger were forgotten, along with everything the old man had ever taught him. His fist knocked Aerion off his feet, and the toe of his boot slammed into the prince's belly. When Aerion went for his knife, Dunk stepped on his wrist and then kicked him again, right in the mouth. He might have kicked him to death right then and there, but the princeling's men swarmed over him. He had a man on each arm and another pounding him across the back. No sooner had he wrestled free of one than two more were on him. Finally they shoved him down and pinned his arms and legs. Aerion was on his feet again. The prince's mouth was bloody. He pushed inside it with a finger. "You've loosened one of my teeth," he complained, "so we'll start by breaking all of yours." He pushed his hair from his eyes. "You look familiar."
"You took me for a stableboy."
Aerion smiled redly. "I recall. You refused to take my horse. Why did you throw your life away? For this whore?" Tanselle was curled up on the ground, cradling her maimed hand. He gave her a shove with the toe of his boot. "She's scarcely worth it. A traitor. The dragon ought never lose."
He is mad, thought Dunk, but he is still a prince's son, and he means to kill me. He might have prayed then, if he had known a prayer all the way through, but there was no time. There was hardly even time to be afraid.
"Nothing more to say?" said Aerion. "You bore me, ser." He poked at his bloody mouth again. "Get a hammer and break all his teeth out, Wate," he commanded, "and then let's cut him open and show him the color of his entrails."
I may not have picked up all the collections of short stories the Adventures of Dunk & Egg stories appeared in, but I did get all the Hedge Knight comics, so I'll talk about those in a minute.
But first, let's talk about the illustrations in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This is the third time I've read at least one of these stories, but the first time with the amazing Gary Gianni illustrations. Gary also illustrated a Conan collection I mentioned here. They're great. Here are a few of them from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms -
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a great introduction to Westeros for Game of Thrones readers and shows the alliances and grievances between the houses in power about ninety years before the events in Game of Thrones. And beyond that, it's a nice story about a young man with a big heart and good intentions struggling to be a noble knight in a world of deceit and power struggles well outside his experience. It bears a lot of similarities to one of my favorite movies, A Knight's Tale, starring the too-soon deceased Heath Ledger before he creeped everybody out as the joker.
Only two of the three stories from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms were adapted into comic book format, The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword. I've heard that the third story will also be adapted into comic format in the future, but I will probably never see it because my comic collection already takes up too much space.
I guess that's enough talk about books (as if anyone will have actually read this far down the page). Let's talk about something else I enjoy - being cheap! Building on my love for RingPlus, here's another shout-out to cheapskates!
What makes me a cheapskate? Well, let's see...
I cut the cord from cable TV around 8 years ago and rely on streaming* services and streaming my DVD collections of TV series for TV-type entertainment. It doesn't work if you're a cable news junkie or care about sports, but works fine if you're not. I do have to pay for high-speed broadband to do this, but I'd be paying for that anyway. I save around $50/month, which isn't a ton, but better than paying an extra $59/month.
I use Ooma for my home phone, so I don't have a phone bill. Ooma also has an app so you can make phone calls/listen to your voicemail from pretty much any data-enabled device/wi-fi device using your phone/tablet.
I drive the cheapest new car I could find. I'm still loving my little Nissan Sentra, even if I can't drive it as much as I'd like to because of the lease.
I've been getting stuff for or nearly free (deeply discounted) from people looking for reviews on Amazon. Mainly books and eBooks, but I've also gotten steep discounts on bluetooth stuff, a solar phone charger, a backpack, and a few other small items. And my reviews are always honest. And often not very favorable unless I really am happy with the item I'm reviewing. Oh, and I also use the free Amazon prime free shipping as often as possible. So there's that, too.
I listen to free-to-download podcasts at work all day every day. This is nothing "revolutionary" - there are a million of them out there for just about every interest. As for me, I'm listening to:
The Adam Carolla Show (to be honest, I have paid the subscription fee on occasion to access old podcasts that I'd missed which were no longer available, as well as the Take a Knee motivational podcasts - but it was a minimal amount of monney, around $4, for the hours of entertainment I get from this podcast)
#SorryNotSorry with Jenna Kim Jones and her husband, Hasbrown Al
Alison Rosen is Your New Best Friend (but I only listen to the Thursday show with the group setting - I can't take the Alison one-on-one interviews. They're awful)
Weird Adults (I find Little Esther [Esther Povitsky] really sweet and funny, even though her podcast is hit and miss with the funny)
Anna Faris is Unqualified (thanks to her superstar husband, Chris Pratt, she has access to a lot of really interesting guests - most notably Chris Evans - that create some listenable podcasts)
And speaking of RingPlus, my love for their service has diminished just a little. The wife, kids, and I all had free cell plans (free except for MMS messages - which didn't cost very much. 4-5 cents each), but that's coming to a screeching halt by the end of the year. Two of the four phone plans have already been replaced with lesser plans (fewer texts, minutes, etc). There is no longer any kind of free unlimited plan, so I now have a small monthly bill to pay for two of the phones. And though still free, the other two plans have a much. much smaller allotment of free minutes, texts, and data (some MMS is actually included in these plans, though). The service itself is still pretty dependable (Sprint network) and works well. So even though I'm not super happy about the change, I'm satisfied for now.
Thus ends another post no one will ever read to the bottom of...
I use Ooma for my home phone, so I don't have a phone bill. Ooma also has an app so you can make phone calls/listen to your voicemail from pretty much any data-enabled device/wi-fi device using your phone/tablet.
I drive the 
I've been getting stuff for or nearly free (deeply discounted) from people looking for reviews on Amazon. Mainly books and eBooks, but I've also gotten steep discounts on bluetooth stuff, a solar phone charger, a backpack, and a few other small items. And my reviews are always honest. And often not very favorable unless I really am happy with the item I'm reviewing. Oh, and I also use the free Amazon prime free shipping as often as possible. So there's that, too.
I listen to free-to-download podcasts at work all day every day. This is nothing "revolutionary" - there are a million of them out there for just about every interest. As for me, I'm listening to:
And speaking of RingPlus, my love for their service has diminished just a little. The wife, kids, and I all had free cell plans (free except for MMS messages - which didn't cost very much. 4-5 cents each), but that's coming to a screeching halt by the end of the year. Two of the four phone plans have already been replaced with lesser plans (fewer texts, minutes, etc). There is no longer any kind of free unlimited plan, so I now have a small monthly bill to pay for two of the phones. And though still free, the other two plans have a much. much smaller allotment of free minutes, texts, and data (some MMS is actually included in these plans, though). The service itself is still pretty dependable (Sprint network) and works well. So even though I'm not super happy about the change, I'm satisfied for now.
