Past Diatribes

"I've heard that before," I can hear you saying. "What excuse is Mick going to give THIS time? Too busy raving about that NFG: Writing With Attitude magazine yet again, I bet!"

No! Unlikely as it sounds, we finally did move into the new house. Since then, I have been busy with the power tools. Haven’t managed to electrocute myself yet, but I’ll keep trying. The current here in Ireland runs at a shocking 230 watts, and there’s tons of opportunities left on my "to do" list... Laying carpet, painting rooms, running phone cables, installing dishwashers, building shelves, wiring lights...

To illustrate progress to date and progress to come, here’s three snaps of our back garden.

As if moving into and renovating a house isn’t enough, I’ve also:

• gone back to school (graduated with my JEB teaching certification)
• taught school (an eight-week course in PC Repair and Upgrade at Maynooth Computer Training)
• and am now back at school once again. I’m taking courses for the MCSE, a professional computer engineering certification.
• And I've added a few new articles on Irish writers for the DFA Guide (check 'em out!)
• Compiled a comparison chart of the different Irish broadband offerings (Broadwhat?)
• Discovered Frank Zappa
• And crafted another batch of homebrew (don't check it out. It sucks)

That’s all in addition to my nine-to-fiver at Symantec. Can’t believe I’ve been there more than a year already. Finding linguistic bugs in someone else’s software is not my life’s work, believe me. But, it’s close to home, a steady job in a time of economic hardship, and sometimes interesting things crop up in the world of computer security.



To illustrate: here’s an email that I recently had with a workmate from my Harcourt Brace days...

Actually my purpose of writing to ask whether you know about those lottery online. Have you heard of Sunsweetwin Lotto Promotion. There is this lottery on line and my husband happen to participate and he was telling me that this is true but I dont quite believe, think such online casino/game can be deceiving. They have a office in Belguim for people to claim awards if you are the winner but there isnt any office name. All they give was address. Have you come across anything like that? Im just curious.

Did a bit of research and learned that the lottery my friend and her husband had won is NOT REAL. It's a scam. As soon as you pay the claiming fees (or whatever they are calling them, this week) you will never see the lotto organizers or any of your money again!

There are countless other scams like that on the Internet. My favorite is the one that invented a fictitious island nation, then sold high-yield bonds guaranteed by Cloudcuckooland’s central bank. Hard to believe that people shelled out their hard-earned dollars, I ponder... then catch myself acting the idiot yet again.



On to musical news. Several months back I brought to your attention one of the late-greats of musical obscurity, Rochester's Colorblind James. So far the one-man crusade to win posthumous recognition for his genius has made slow progress. (One day, good reader, one day...)

This episode, I’d like to spotlight a man who is workin’ hard to win himself more fans each day. I say "a man," but really, he’s greater than that.

"Is it Elvis?" I hear you ask.

No.



It’s El Vez. The Mexican Elvis! In the same manner that the King fused country, gospel and blues to spark the rock n’ roll revolution, El Vez is working today to mix Latino, rock, Broadway and… um… Elvis music. The product very well may be the sound that defines the next fifty years.

I’m often asked, "Is El Vez an Elvis Impersonator?" Yes and no. He’s got so much of that spirit in him, it doesn’t even matter that he sounds nothing like The King. Now, a run-of-the-mill impersonator would do his best to recreate the exact experience that Elvis gave. Some of them do a damn fine job of it, too. Damn fine. But El Vez recognizes that three decades of music have come and gone, since that day. The realities of the modern world must be taken into account, if the product has any hope to serve as a relevant soundtrack for today’s listener. El Vez sings:



As she shoes the flies
On a hot and smoggy summer morn
Another brown baby is born
En el barrio...

More than updating just the lyrics, El Vez has sampled the Almann Brothers, the Beatles and Disneyland before our musical visit to the barrio (Hispanic ghetto) is done. Has Ricky Martin ever done that? J Lo? That Eglasias kid? No. Mick says: drop-kick those posers and get your ears some El Vez.



Yes, it was inevitable. I’m too proud of the 88 pages of fiction, poetry, comics, articles, and attitude that is NFG Issue 3 to let it pass without a plug. Some people have passed comment that my imagination is fairly rich… the power of the material we accepted for No. 3 blows me away, even after reading it for the third, fifth, or tenth time. DAMN.

If you’ve got a few bucks to spare, pick up a copy at your local bookstore (now distributed coast to coast in Canada and the US!) or send away for one by post.

That’s it ‘til next time! Raise a turkey leg (or, better yet, a glass of BEER) and spare a thought of me, working away on Thanksgiving day. Anything weird or exciting happening out your direction? Drop me a line and let me know!

Peace

Y F M H


 

mick @ mickhalpin dot com