CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. Realizing that everyone's taste and sensibilities are different, I want to review a really different TV show. It's called Baggage. It's on the Game Show Network, at 9:30PM eastern time.      To begin with, the host for this game show is Jerry Springer. Yes, that Jerry Springer. I have never watched the Jerry Springer Show. No particular reason, I just don't like game shows. Plus, I don't like fussing and fighting, real or staged, except in movies and video games. My wife got a kick out of this show, however, and urged me to watch it. So I tried it.     Here's the recipe. It's like The Dating Game on steroids. You have a contestant who has to choose between three members of the opposite sex with whom they are to have a date. The catch is this. Each of the three comes on stage with three suitcases, a small, medium and large. As they open their baggage one at a time, their quirks are revealed. This leads to their elimin...

    Hey, everyone. First of all let me apologize to the I-Pad folks who could not see my squirrel video. It was not in the proper format for I-Pad viewing, I suppose. You can go to your PC and watch it. It did not appear on Pulse , either.     I am on the app store quite a bit and I find it intriguing to watch the shifting tides. Let me expound a little on its subtleties. With the review system, buyers have a lot of power to control some things, which is good. I have watched game developers put out updates for games that, rather than enhance the game, inserted adds on a game that people have already paid for. They were dumped on pretty good for it too. There have been a few games where it was apparent that developers had their employees and relatives pad the reviews to get a better rating. Working the system, I think it's called.      The recent innovation of In-App-Purchases is the coming thing. They sell you a game. Then you have to ...

    Check out this video of the pre-zen squirrel. No, I did not give an innocent squirrel caffeine. Hey, a little side story about this video. I wrote a childrens' book about Walter, The Lonesome Turtle . I intended to have pictures in it and this video, but had a horrible time getting them uploaded for Smashwords. I believe it would have been very cool. At the time it would have been one of the first of it's kind. Now, interactive books are the coming thing. Another thing about Walter is this: I just sat down one day and wrote it while I looked at a handful of photos from my library. I wrote the story from the pics, not vice versa. At any rate it was fun. I burned about three solid weeks and tore my hair out just trying to get my fancy version published. At length I gave up and published a book with no pics. Bummer. By the way, in the book this squirrel is a neighbor of Walter's, much maligned as a sloppy eater.      One more note on the video. Yes,...

    Hey, everyone. I hope y'all are doing well. I've been real busy, typing a manuscript for the sequel to KGB Retirement Program. It will still be a couple of weeks before I can get it on Smashwords. It has been a struggle. I still have to edit, make quite a few changes, then submit it for their approval. It is typed, at least.      Well, it looks like the Packers and Steelers are in the Super Bowl. I hope the Packers win it for the simple reason that they haven't won it in a while. I'm not particularly fond of either team. I really respect the way that Aaron Rogers has kept his mouth shut through all the Bret Favre situation. Seems to be a class guy. It seems funny that I started the season thinking that Bret and the Vikings would win a ring. Now Rogers gets the glory year and Bret is back on his tractor. Just before I wrote this I saw on Google News that Jeff Fisher and the Titans had parted ways. Good coach. I think the Titans have made a mistake. It's...

    I have an animal that lives around here in the woods. It has a distressing habit of leaving its scat in the middle of our trails as a token of the high esteem in which it holds me both as a person and a writer. I suspect that it is a coon but I have no way of knowing at this time. It does not pay to wander along, gazing at the tree tops. We have taken to putting sticks on either side of the stuff it leaves, so we can know to avoid it. I fear that the Raccoon may think we revere his work so much that we have framed it. It is reasonable to assume that he is now on an ego trip and thinks he's like one of the great Impressionist painters of bygone days. Even now he may be spying on the trail, watching to see our reaction, rubbing his little hands together in glee as he awaits our arrival. I can visualize him in his tiny beret and his stained smock. Whatever.      Here's a pic of that crypt I mentioned the other day in The Lost Graveyard . If you have...

    Hey everyone. The question that a lot of business people have to be asking themselves tonight may be this. Why didn't we think of an app store like Apple? I'm sure you've seen the news. It's all over the internet that Apple has just had its 10 billionth app downloaded. For all of us not good with numbers, let me say that is a lot of apps. It's also a lot of dinero because if you sell an app on Apple's store, Apple gets a 30 percent cut of the pie. By the way, they don't give the I-Pads away, either.     After just a few days of using the I-Pad, I almost went out and bought some stock in Apple. I felt that strongly about that product. The app store is a huge piece of the I-Pad's success. A few minutes ago I was reading on Flipboard that the 3DS games were going to run $40 to $50. I don't know how long the traditional gaming community can compete with Apple at these prices. Not when you can get a ton of games on the app store for that same $40.  ...

    Hey, everyone. I've been thinking about the squirrel I told you about yesterday. I'm an avid student of animal behavior and I think I've come up with a few more possibilities for his odd behavior. 1. My car is gray, like him. He thinks the car is the biggest, shiniest, scariest squirrel in the world. 2. He's staring at his reflection, being a supremely egotistical squirrel. 3. It's a zen thing and he is trying to achieve inner peace. 4. A friend of his was struck by a similar vehicle and he is in mourning. 5. He is trying to determine if my car is edible. 6. He is hoping to write 'wash me' on the vehicle in squirrel language. 7. He placed an acorn in the tail pipe, like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop and is currently gloating over disabling the vehicle. (Eddie used a banana) 8. He was sitting to the east of the car so as to block the extremely cold west wind. 9. He has heard the engine running and thinks that there are captured squirrels und...

    Hey, everyone. Yeah, I know it's a weird title. There are times, here on the mountain, when the animals seem to act a bit strange. Today was one of those days. This morning as we were drinking our coffee there was a deer hanging around out back. He wasn't very big, maybe a teen-aged deer. He acted lethargic and I thought, perhaps, that he just needed a little more roughage in his diet. He would wander around a bit, then he'd lay in a patch of sunshine. This went on for hours. He didn't even nibble at the laurel. I started to worry that the dude was hurt or sick, or dying. Eventually another deer came up, which was good. Normally deer are very social animals. When we went out for our walk the two deer drifted away and I forgot about them.      In the afternoon I walked by the bedroom window and noticed a squirrel sitting next to my car. Nothing new about that. When I came back five minutes later, he was still sitting there, either staring at the ca...

    Hey, everyone. I stopped by Books-A-Million the other day. As I strolled about I looked at songbooks, magazines and the bargain racks of hardcover novels. I rarely buy the new hardcovers due to the ridiculous cost. I mean, like a wine lover, one must wait until the $27 novel mellows into a succulent $6.99 book. I bought five such books, which would have cost more as an ebook on the on-line stores.      One of these books is Long Lost , a novel by Harlan Coben. Coben is hard to beat among present day authors. This book is excellent, very close to being that rare breed, 4 stars out of 4. Here's the recipe. Myron Bolitar, a sports agent, is our hero. His routine is shattered when a lady from his past calls him and begs him to come to Paris. Coincidentally, his current love interest dumps him about the same time, making it easy to run to the devastating Terese Collins in Paris. Why not fly over and drown his sorrows in the arms of the passionate Teres...

    Last night I watched a DVD of Patton, starring the terrific actor, Mr. George C. Scott. The movie, if you've somehow missed it, is a classic and a definite 4 stars out of 4. (Funny, considering it is about a General) It details the career of the famous American General. This post, however, is about the actor and not the movie.     As I watched Patton, I was again struck by what a privilege to watch an actor at the top of his game. It was a role that seemed written for him and he personified Patton to such an extent that the two are almost inseparable in conversation. He earned an Oscar for his performance, his second. He refused both, according to Wikipedia. Much of the information I share in this post is due to what I have read there. It's a terrific site as everyone knows, but I stray from my subject.      My favorite thing about George was the fact that he aspired to be a writer. That's not quite fair. He was a writer, having wr...

    Hey, everyone. Let's talk about a few apps from the I-Tunes store. As you know, playing around with new apps and games has become a bit of a hobby of mine. It is fun.     I've got a new photo tool called Picturizr. It's free and it's fun, which are two of my favorite words. Within a few minutes of downloading the app, I had put glasses, bushy black eyebrows and a big nose on a picture I have of a cross-eyed deer. Huge fun and just my maturity level too. Then I put pictures of my grandchildren on a stage with thousands of cheering fans, as they rocked on with guitar and keyboard and vocals. Finally, I took a picture of Walter the Turtle from my photo library and used Picturizr to put him behind bars in a jail cell. There are hats, tongues, eyes, noses and other neat stuff you can cannibalize onto your photos as well.      My wife is the great puzzler, as I've mentioned before. She recently downloaded a new game called TanZen. It's a...

     This is a request to all those game developers that submit games to the app store. Please put an easy category on all your game levels so that semi-geeks can win eventually. I mean, hey, guys. I work a job and other things. I can't just play video games. Another news flash for you, not everyone wants to play on-line multi-player, okay? Don't make the game so we have to have other players to win. That leaves the hermits out in the cold.     I scrounge and read and work and find some dynamite games. I win some levels, enjoy it, then boom! The grim truth rears its ugly head. I don't play that well.      Seriously, it's like an epidemic in gaming. Let's take the phenom, Angry Birds. I really like it but I get to a certain level and it drives me nuts trying to overcome, baby! Same with Fragger. On Spiderman, I can't get past the Rhino because he flees too fast. What good are the awesome graphics of N.O,V.A. 2 if the two monstrous...

    Hey, everyone. Up until a few(?) years ago, when my thrill seeking nature began to evolve into a personality that hungered for ease and comfort, I liked to ride the white water. I liked to use a rubber raft and ride the rapids. The bigger and more violent, the better. I remember one time when we were rafting a particular large creek in the mountains. The water was down just enough so that some sharp rocks were more exposed than usual. We ripped the bottoms out of all three of our rafts and had to hike out of a remote area. It took all day and a good part of the night to get back to our vehicles and we were a sorry-looking group when we came dragging into camp. One guy missed 3 days of work due to exposure and dehydration, sunburn and other neat stuff. The dude cussed me the next time I called him to go rafting. The only way out that we were sure of was along the creek. Up and down over boulders, in and out of the water, snakes and bugs, were not his cup of tea. He had...

    It's easy to romanticize the mountains of the southern United States. If you move from somewhere else, as so many people do, you see the beauty, charm, animals, the forests and the streams. It seems an easy-going lifestyle.     As a southerner born, you've grown up hearing stories about less pleasant times. Perhaps, if you're older, you could tell a few stories yourself.     The other day I found an old graveyard near the back of my property. It was deserted, overgrown, perhaps only a handful of people being aware of its existence. I have walked within a stone's throw of it hundreds of times and didn't know it was there. It's hard to say how many are buried there, perhaps fifteen? Most of the graves have no true marker, only a piece of mountain stone with no name or date, nor any mark upon it. Mountain stones just like them are hauled out of these mountains by the truckload to decorate the front of a store in Indiana or a nice home in G...

     Hey, everyone. It's a beautiful day here. (Blatant lie) I had promised to tell you a bit about a new IOS game I bought called Terminator Salvation. It's a rowdy shooter game that is a reasonable $4.99 on the app store. I bought it about the same time that I bought N.O.V.A 2 and forgive me if I use the two for a 'this porridge is too hot, this is too cold'  type of review.     Terminator follows John Connor and his comrades through a series of landscapes which are rendered very well. They fight various robots and terminator-type tanks, planes and vehicles. It's humans against machines for control of the planet.     Skynet, the computer entity that has become self aware, just like a Microsoft Update gone awry, has control of things, and our human friends are not content with that. You fight your way through creepy caves with proximity mines, shooting everything that breathes doesn't breathe. There is a canyon battle, a desert ...

    Many of you will remember a movie called Fallen. It stars Denzel Washington as a cop who catches a serial killer and is present when the evil dude is executed. Turns out the guy is demon possessed and the wicked spirit travels from person to person as it stalks Denzel and makes his life a wreck. Yeah, you're right. It is scary. The way that Denzel knows that the spirit is in a person is because the person starts singing Time Is On My Side by the Rolling Stones.     Here's the rest of the story. My daughter-in-law saw this movie and it scared the dickens out of her. A few weeks later, they're at the house and I start singing Time Is On My Side . She looks at me with these big eyes and I say "What?" It was hugely funny because I had not seen the film at that time.     From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.

    Hey, everyone. I watched a movie on Starz tonight. It was a charming flick that I think you'd really like. The title is I'll Be There . It's the tale of a Scottish rocker from the 1980's and his abbreviated(one night stand) love affair with an English lady. Many years later(16), the rocker is confronted with the news that he has a daughter. The rocker is played by Craig Ferguson, his daughter is played by Charlotte Church and her mother is played by Jemma Redgrave. The acting is terrific as is the script and direction. It has a bit of a fairy tale quality about it. It's a romance, it's a comedy, it's 3.5 stars out of 4. If I wasn't so tight with my stars, I'd give it a 4.     Paul Kerr is the rocker and he has a bit of a drinking problem. As he tries to straighten out his life, he seeks to make amends to the girl he left behind. He also attempts to build a relationship with the daughter he never knew he had. Heartwarming drama is much better wh...

    Hey, everyone. I hope your weekend is going well. First off tonight I'd like to talk a little football. All you non-fans hang with me, please. I want to talk some environmental stuff later.     Peyton Manning, one of the great gentlemen in sports and a favorite of mine, has been put out of the playoffs by the NY Jets. It was a terrific game and either team deserved the win. I felt bad for this young kid who roughed the Jets kicker and could have been blamed for the loss if the Colts had not come back and scored. At any rate, the Jets won and their defense appeared to be back to it's rugged self of previous times.      In the other NFL playoff game today, the Seattle Seahawks beat the New Orleans Saints. Friday I told a guy that New Orleans would beat the Seahawks as bad as they wanted to. I did not say this because I wanted the Saints to win. I wanted Seattle to win. I just thought that the Saints were the better team. This was a m...

    I'm not much of a winter guy, as you know. I'm a beach-loving guy and as such I am prone to cabin fever on a day like today. We have snow, a 20 mph wind and temps in the low 20's. It's supposed to drop to around 9 degrees tonight here on the mountain. So I'll go out and split a few chunks of oak for the fireplace and get ready to watch the NFL games today. My Falcons have the weekend off thanks to their excellent record. This is good because it's hard to lose when you don't have to play.     I hope to do some typing on another of my books today. If I can resist the lure of my I-Pad games I may actually accomplish something during the inclement weather. It brings to mind once again an article I read in which a newspaper writer said that the I-Pad was a great 'productivity killer'. Ain't it the truth?     To give you a bit of the feel of this area let me tell you about this. When you have extreme cold with high winds, combined with all ou...

    Hey, everyone. It's snowing here in the mountains and since it wasn't a good day to get out and go to the movies, we decided to rent one. I knew that Salt , starring Angelina Jolie, had been released for downloading so I rented it on Apple TV. Let me talk about the movie and then I want to talk about the Apple TV.       Salt is one of the better movies I've seen lately and I'd rate it as 3.5 stars out of 4. I love spy movies and this one delivers in a big way. Look out, James Bond, because Angelina is in your kitchen and the stove is hot! The lady can do the action roles. In this fast-paced thriller, loaded with stunts that would make a stunt-man drink, Angelina plays Evelyn Salt, CIA agent. When a Russian spy walks into CIA headquarters, just strolling in off the street, he accuses Salt of being a Russian agent who is planning to kill the Soviet Premiere as he visits New York to attend a funeral. Salt has to escape the building, then goes ...

    Hey, everyone. I guess that if there's anything I truly love to do, it would have to be killing robots and aliens in defense of mankind. That's just what I'm all about. For this reason I love the new game I bought this past weekend. As you may have guessed from the title of the blog post, I'm talking about NOVA 2 for I-Pad.     Being a bit of a tightwad, I researched the game before buying it. I read reviews on the app store and on blogs, I went to you-tube and watched video reviews etc. The game cost a whopping $6.99 and is a bargain at that price. Here's the recipe. Graphics that are near movie-quality and a fast paced shooter game that is tough to beat. In fact, for a geezer like me, it may be too tough to beat. I prefer things easy these days. These big 'mechs', that's robots, are bad to the bone. After getting my behindus kicked for a while I have to slink off to a corner and kill a few dinosaurs on Carnivore , which is the best game on planet...

    Hey, everyone. I hope you guys are having a pleasant new year.     I just finished reading James Lee Burke's latest novel. The title is The Glass Rainbow and its very good. Burke has this series about a police detective in Louisiana, named Dave Robicheaux. The guy has more hangups than I do, with a friend named Clete Purcell who is in worse shape. The series is full of compelling characters. In this book Dave is trying to solve a murder case involving some young women who were abducted. Dave and Clete try not to let the law get in their way too much.     Burke's books are a view into a world which is darker than anything we want a steady diet of. What I mean is, read one of Burke's books, then read something else. Otherwise it can get a bit depressing. Of course I have always followed that formula with any author, even more mellow guys like Edgar Rice Burroughs. It prevents your favorite authors from growing stale.     ...

    One day my wife and I were standing in the back yard at the edge of the woods. We heard dogs baying on a ridge to the west, about a mile away. They seemed to be coming closer to us and we swung around in the direction of the sounds, waiting expectantly. Sure enough, closer and closer they came. The barks and yelps told us the hounds were in hot pursuit of something.     The only clear view at our place is down the driveway which is 300 feet long. We saw a red fox running up the drive and he had a motley aggregation of hounds right behind him, their tongues hanging out and dripping saliva. I'll never forget the look on the fox's face as he approached. Afraid? I guess not. He appeared to be grinning and was obviously having fun with the dogs.     The whole bunch came running right up to us, much to our surprise. Then, in an instant, the little fox changed course at an incredible 90 degree angle and accelerated away in a burst of speed tha...