CE Wills

   Hey, everyone. So, what's up? Today is a pretty day with sunshine and a temperature in the forties. I was thinking about raking and burning leaves. I wasn't thinking about it very seriously, just thinking about it. Ha, ha.      I had a cool burger last night. If you ever get a chance to try this one you should consider it. It was a huge rascal, so big that even my mouth had difficulty wrapping around it. It was a bacon and egg burger with all the trimmings. I must say that it was perhaps the best burger I ever ate. The leaky egg made it so moist and tasty. Of course, I like eggs with steak for breakfast on rare occasion and I really like beer with that dish as well, or champagne.     Hey, did you see where they are getting on the James Bond character for his boozing? Yeah. They already made it socially unacceptable for him to smoke. Next will be his womanizing, no doubt. Soon, all literature, games, movies, T.V. and print media will ...

    Hey, everyone. It is a cool, foggy night at the author's green retreat. Carley and I went out tonight and strolled into a theater to see The Book Thief . It is a story that is set in Germany, during World War 2. The star of the show is one Liesel, a girl played wonderfully by talented child actress Sophie Nelisse.     Liesel is on board a train at the start of the show, with her mother and brother. The brother dies and Liesel watches men cut a hole in the frozen ground with axes, in order to bury the young boy. Then the 10 or 12 year old girl is left alone because the mother either leaves her or is placed in a concentration camp. At any rate, Liesel winds up with foster parents and may I say that no orphan ever hit the jackpot for foster parents like this little lady did.     The new father is Hans, played by Geoffrey Rush in what may well be an oscar-winning performance. His wife is the dour Rosa (Emily Watson), a crabby person with ...

Hey, everyone. Let me start by saying that on some of my posts the words are being split up from one line to the other. I haven't changed anything and I don't understand it. Blogger has been acting up for some time, though it seems unreasonable to complain about a free service. I was just over on the Washington Post and read a good article on the XBOX One. It freaked me out a little that the device can read your skeletal structure (or your voice) and monitor who's in the room. I'm not too sure that I'm comfortable with that, although I would like to play some games on it. I do, however, love gaming on my I-Pad and prefer not having a controller; plus the games are so much cheaper. Carley and I did a road trip yesterday, traveling to Nashville to Cool Springs Galleria. They have a big Apple Store there and guess what? They actually have that Tech Unicorn there, known to devotees as the I-Phone 5s (Gold, 16 Gig). I managed to keep my lustful little paws off its s...

   Hey, everyone. Some time ago I was talking about NFL quarterbacks and I said something like this. There are only a very few quarterbacks on earth who can take a team to the Super Bowl, maybe 10 or 12 guys; so if you're serious about winning a championship, find one and pay him what you have to in order to keep him. Tonight I would like to add a bit to that thought.     Lately, when a quarterback has proven himself and sometimes when he hasn't, they land a contract in the range of 20 million a year or maybe 100 million dollars for the contract. Sometimes a fat contract like this can cripple a team payroll to the point where they can't keep enough of their good players (other than the QB) to have a great team. So, it is time for quarterbacks, whether their agents like it or not, to show a little restraint about their own salary. Better still, it may be necessary to put a cap on salaries of quarterbacks, something like this: "No individual's salary can excee...

    Hey, everyone. Let's talk about games. But.. first let's mention Prince Harry. Everybody needs to blow off some steam. Leave the guy alone. Can you imagine living in the fish bowl of public scrutiny that he has to endure? He would probably give his fortune just to be a normal bloke for a couple of weeks. No, I didn't see the pics and don't wish to. Seems like a minor mistake to me. He came, he saw, he partied. What happens in Vegas should have stayed in Vegas. Enough said.     Oh, yeah, the games. First off, the shield. I got a freebie, an endless runner from the app store. It is titled One Epic Knight and has zero to do with Vegas. In this endless runner, you are a Knight with a funny voice. You run through dungeons. You dodge things, jump things and best of all, you smash things. Here's the funny part. I was getting killed by running into objects that I was supposed to smash. There was supposed to be a shield that you use to smash obstacles. Well, i...

    Hey, everyone. Have you ever heard the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction? I was just reading Google News and saw a headline from Fox News that intrigued me. The story is about a guy named (maybe) Roy Antiqua. He was pulled over for a traffic violation in Florida and gave the cop a phony ID. He was arrested and when his home was searched they found lots of interesting stuff.     They found lots of IDs from organizations like the CIA, Coast Guard, Boy Scouts and medical facilities. They found a photo of the guy in Doctor's garb, holding a new-born baby. They found a bunch of cash. In his closet was a multitude of uniforms ranging from military apparel to the aforementioned Scout Leader. This reminds me of the old adage about Jack of all trades, master of none.      I guess the police have appealed to the public for help in identifying this man. They are pretty concerned with his motives in impersonating a Scout Leader, a...

    Hey, everyone. I read Google News on my PC, almost every day. You can customize it to suit your interests and one of 'my' sections is any news under the heading of blogs or blogging. Wow, is it educational and a little freaky to read some of this stuff?     There are bloggers who have a lot of trouble. Just yesterday, I read about a lady called The Skinny Blogger who had made some comments about Kate Upton being fat. (Don't know what photos she was looking at. Ha, ha. ) Anyway, this lady blogger received death threats and rape threats over this stuff. Are we as a people getting too serious about certain things? Well, yeah, I think so.     Some bloggers have been put in prison over things they wrote, I guess. Especially when they are blogging in a country with a totalitarian regime. I admire their grit. Several bloggers who stepped on the wrong toes down around the Mexican and U.S. border have been killed.      Blogg...

    Hey, everyone. Yes, you were right. My stomach was upset yesterday after that midnight snack. That is not the purpose of this post, however.       A few days ago I read a terrific article by a lady named Alexandra Alter. I read it as an excerpt on Zite, I think, but when I wanted to reread it, I had to do a search and found it on the Wall Street Journal. The title is Your E-Book Is Watching You . It is excellent and I thought I'd share the link. online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304870304577490950051438304.html       Let me say that I love the creepy picture of the eyes on the printed page. I do hope that you read the article calmly. Like most technical things it is not as bad as it seems but could certainly be abused by governments and others. Here's the gist of the article for those gamers who popped into the site and really have no interest in ebooks.      Evidently, several of the big on-line boo...

     Hey, everyone. I wish you a good morning. It is frosty and cool here at the green retreat. Speaking of weather.. A year or so ago, I mentioned the fact that we had different types of trees that seemed to be dying out. Dogwoods, pin oaks, sourwoods etc. I said that I thought that entire climate zones were sliding north and I wondered how long it would be before the pines that are prevalent in middle and southern Georgia would be the dominate trees in the current hardwood country. Last night I was reading an article on the Washington Post that mentioned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reshaped its map for planting vegetation and now shows marked slides of zones to the north in most spots. When you become intimate with the environment, as we have here, you notice more readily the things that are going on with Mother Nature. They are gradual, sure, but I have noticed these things over the last ten years.      On a less serious level,...

    Hey, everyone. When I say 'game' I don't mean a video game. I am referring to a con game that is being perpetrated on the American consumer. Since roughly a third of my readers are outside of the U.S., I will expound a bit.      Like most goods these days, manufacturers of light bulbs have started to make light bulbs to last for less and less time. It started with a deal where they decided that global warming would be reduced by using certain types of light bulbs. I am all for slowing global warming. I believe that global warming exists and I appreciate Albert Gore's and others' initiative on this matter. Supposedly there was a new type of bulbs that would last for a year and some of them lasted very well. Of course they were expensive. Maybe a couple of dollars each. The older type of bulbs went up in price, then became hard to find. Well, now the normal bulbs last about a week. I kid you not. I had a day last week when I had to change 3 light bu...

    Hey, everyone. Another exciting day here at the green retreat. My high point thus far was killing a gnat. We have these gnats that love to bite your face. They are almost invisible because they are tiny. The best way to kill them is to lurk at the glass doors during the early morning or late evening, where you can see them against the light. I suppose that they are attempting to get back to their crypt before the sun gets high. I hate these voracious critters. Their bites make your face itch. They particularly like to bite the area of my brows. Someday I may work up the nerve to follow one of them back to their crypt and drive a spike through the whole place. Sorry, Halloween is over and Thanksgiving is here... I am so thankful that I killed this stupid gnat that has been biting me.       In non-gnat news, I see that police are reopening the Natalie Wood case. She drowned off the coast of California many moons ago. Evidently the Captain of Na...

    Hey, everyone. Just been watching the mess up at Penn State. I guess I don't understand why they fired Paterno. There was an alleged crime which he had nothing to do with. Joe did not see the alleged crime take place. When told about it, he reported it to his superiors and he winds up getting in trouble for it. I must be missing something here.     From experience I can state that once you get a certain age, it is hard to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Everything gets more difficult. When you are under the microscope like famous people are, you will never get it right. What must it be like to have a million people second-guessing your every decision? After a lifetime of having concerned alumni play Monday morning quarterback and try to tell you which play you should have called in Saturday's game, now you reach the end of your career and have the media people try, judge and convict you for something you had no control over.    ...

Hey, everyone. I have dubbed this moth the Butterscotch Moth . He is a big guy and looks like he has furry legs and tufts of hair growing from his back. Like a 50 year old plumber in a strap tee shirt.Da Vinci himself couldn't have painted his wings so beautifully. I just read an interesting article from Sports Illustrated.com by Al Michaels, the terrific sportscaster. He was filling in for Peter King while Peter is on vacation. First of all I was very impressed by how well Al wrote. I mean, this guy could have had a great career as a writer, a columnist or a blogger. Moreover, it would be nice to just sit down and chat with this guy. It was a lengthy piece and Al touched on a number of subjects with bluntness, knowledge and a toughness that does not condone B.S. 1. The NFL lockout 2. America's infatuation with football. 3. The Oakland Raiders. 4. His admiration for John Madden. 5.Restaurants. 6. Hotels. 7. Stadium Deals and NFL football in Los Angeles. 8. Chris Coll...

    Hey, everyone. There was a time when I watched quite a bit of network news on TV. Dan Rather and folks like that. As the years went by and commercials became more numerous and odious I quit watching news. The right wing has since got their own news channel and most other news sources are left wingers. Seems like, in my dimmest memories, there was a time when news people prided themselves on objectivity. Perhaps I was just naive. I prefer to get just the news and put my own slant on it, thanks.    A couple of years ago I started reading Google News on my PC and really liked it. I find it extremely cool to actually choose the types of things that interest me. I leave the guilt-trip type of news for others to read. I don't like to read or watch news that centers on the tragedies of life, so that I feel more depressed than I was when I started. I read more sports, tech, I-Pad, e-book and Kindle news. I'm very interested in weather, also.     My ...