An Open Letter To Joss Whedon

Dearest Mr. (Joss) Whedon,

Allow me to start by offering my sincere congratulations for the highly successful release of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Once again you’ve hit it out of the park, much to the great delight of fans like myself. I hope that you are ultimately able to both pay the crew and reward yourself handsomely for such an excellent product.

While the method of releasing Dr. Horrible is obviously successful, it still relies on “push” production: you develop, create, and package entertainment, and then push it out into the market, where it is hopefully eagerly consumed. The risk must be borne by yourself, and the market has little opportunity to provide you (and any intermediate parties) with direct feedback, other than after the fact through grassroots fan movements.

I would like to propose a new paradigm of entertainment delivery that could provide more benefit to both yourself, the people you work with, and your fans. It is a model based on agriculture, of all things; specifically, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA). A typical farm operates on “push” production: a crop is grown, and pushed into the market to be sold. A CSA farm, on the other hand, operates on a “pull” production method, in that it has a membership that is allotted a share of the yields of the farm on a weekly basis. Instead of trying to find the best method of pushing the farm’s yields into the market, the market is already there, waiting for the yields to come to them.

Applying this sort of paradigm isn’t unheard of in entertainment. I personally know a musician, Bryan Moyer Suderman, that has successfully adopted the CSA model to music; he produces music on a regular basis and distributes it to his membership. You can read more about how he, and others, are using this model at CommunitySupportedArts.com.

By now it’s probably no surprise that I propose that Mutant Enemy Productions embrace a Community-Supported Entertainment model. We, your loyal Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dr.Horrible fans, will pay UP FRONT for entertainment you produce. This summer, it was Dr. Horrible via iTunes. Perhaps in the winter you’ll send us a comic book via PDF. Later you could send us some songs you wrote. Maybe Firefly could live on again as monthly episodes. That’s the beauty of it - we get our Whedon fix direct and undiluted, and you have the freedom to create, balancing distribution between traditional marketing and Community-Supported Entertainment.

Please, Mr. Whedon. Allow your fans to support you. Thank you for your consideration.

Regards,
Andrew

P.S. If anyone has the means to forward this on to Joss or his agent, please do so with my blessing.

Joss Whedon rocks, yet again

If you have not yet heard of, let alone gone and watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and you consider yourself even a remote fan of Joss Whedon’s work, GET OFF YOUR BUT AND CLICK NOW NOW NOW!!!

Seriously, folks. He’s put up a 3-part Internet musical that is free for viewing until Sunday the 20th. Acts 1 and 2 are up now, with Act 3 (oh GOD I can’t wait!) coming on Saturday. Later you’ll be able to get it off iTunes or buy the DVD, but this is FREE right now, and it’s GOOD.

Go watch it. Seriously, don’t make me whip out my hammer.

Remedial Telemarketing

1) If you call and they are interested, by all means call back.

2) If you call back and they have changed their mind, do not call back.

3) If you call back again and they ask to be put on your Do Not Call list, comply.

4) If you don’t comply, and call them back again and they yell at you and again demand to be put on their Do Not Call list, better do it this time.

5) If you don’t comply again, and call them back again, and they scream at you and threaten to call the police, DO NOT CALL BACK EIGHT MORE TIMES AND BE VULGAR WITH THEM.

Unfortunately, the company I got to deal with this evening did not offer remedial telemarketing to their callers. So I had the pleasure of calling the local police and having them deal with the company. The constable in charge of this was very helpful, called me back quickly, found the company’s phone number (which had been obscured from *69), talked to a manager, and said the manager she talked to assured her it should not happen again… but if it does, to call her back to escalate the issue.

Fine and dandy, but we’ve already told these folks not to call… and they’ve called back 10 times. From my research, that should be ten $15,000 fines.

Fuck you, Toronto-based duct cleaning company. You’ve gone from irritant to target.

what a CRAZY two weeks…

Gak, what a fortnight it’s been. Our offer was accepted, but then it took almost the entire following week to confirm financing. Once that was done, we set a date for ourselves to get our home on the market (via ByTheOwner.com) and have some open houses.

MAN, what a lot of work. In two weeks we’ve filled a 5×10 self-storage place, cleaned, organized, and staged an entire house (while simultaneously living in said house with three kids - no small feat at all), just in time to show it off today, our first of two back-to-back open houses. This past week has been a lot of stress… I sure hope we can dial it back a bunch this next week.

So for all that, what do I get today? Four visitors. Yup. One of those visitors was a neighbour with the same model townhouse that is also thinking of selling. One of the other visitors called about an hour later and offered a real lowball number. Disappointed? Yeah, a bit… but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Right now I just want to catch my breath and have something yummy and alcoholic.

it will be the Summer of the House

As of Thursday, we will be moving. After some fine-toothed combing in regards to the financing aspect, we’ve been approved, and thus removed our last (and only) condition on our offer. So at the end of August, we’ve moving!

Time to panic.

There is SO MUCH to do. First, we have to get the house ready to show. That means paint touch-ups, painting 3 bathrooms (which are still original “builder bone”), finishing the basement (putting up the drop ceiling), decluttering the WHOLE house, and staging and cleaning it. Our goal is to have back-to-back open houses on June 28 and 29. It’s going to be a very busy two weeks.

MUCH better, thankyouverymuch…

I’m pleased to announce that yesterday ended at midnight, and I was asleep nearly two full hours before then. So the day that started badly at least ended well enough.

As for my car… well, the good news is that it only required $1400 in service. The bad news would have been a LOT worse. See, turns out the timing belt slipped, thus throwing the engine way out of tune, ensuring it wouldn’t run. However, on TDI engines, if the timing belt breaks, valves slam into pistons and you’re looking at a new cylinder head, if not a new engine outright. That, my friends, would set me back about $4000. So $1400 is good news indeed. And at least I get quite a bit for my money; a new timing belt (so we’re good there for another 120k or so), a new water pump (ditto), and a new EGR valve. With those taken care of, the big nagging worry is gone (the timing belt) and the minor driveability issues I’d been having should be cured.

Of course, I still need to deal with the exhaust issue, but that’s something else entirely.

House: dammit, we’re SO close… the lender wants to do some due diligence because I’m still in my probationary period at work, but otherwise we have it. Until they give the all-green, however, our financing condition stays. And here I thought we’d have it all put to bed on Monday. Silly me…

To end off on a positive note: the kids went to bed without much trouble, and it’s going to go down to 9°C tonight so the house will get nice and cool. (Too bad all the neighbours can’t seem to figure that out - I’m listening to the hum of air conditioners as I type.) It’ll be nice to have a good, deep, cool sleep. Yeah.

it’s like the day of the Triffids

I read a lot of sci-fi in my younger days (when I still had time to read for leisure). One book I remember reading was Day of the Triffids. For those that haven’t read it, the two-cent synopsis is that space weapons malfunction, wreaking havoc on the citizens of Earth. Today felt EXACTLY like that.

It’s probably not space-based weapons going haywire, but it may as well be. First, I started getting a migraine over breakfast. It never went away, but after trying for 20 minutes to get my work webmail to actually let me log in to tell my boss I’m not coming in, it degraded itself into just a headache. As I had training to go to, I decided to grimace and bear it. Then I tried to leave, but my car wouldn’t start. Thankfully, we do have a second vehicle, and it wasn’t needed by the rest of the household today so I took it. Then, lucky me, I got to sit through five hours of extremely dry “training”, which is basically getting an overview of Standard Operating Procedures. To say that it was dry would be an understatement - it was an active dessicant, if anything. Then I get a distressed phone call from Jannette telling me the kids are going batshit trying to get her to give them her iPod so they can play Breakout, and completely not listening to her or even caring that they have lost most of their priviledges for the week and being a hair’s breadth from being smacked (from a woman who has never, ever spanked). I’m still waiting to hear whether our financing has gone through so I call the mortgage broker only to find out that his BUSINESS card has his HOME e-mail address on it, so while he received it he doesn’t have it at work and thereby can’t give us an answer until tomorrow. Then I get home to see if there’s something I can do to fix my car, and notice that the exhaust system has been cleaved in two. Calling the dealer, it may be that the timing belt has slipped (only $600 to fix and replace), or I’ve blown a head gasket, or possibly even damaged the cylinder head ($4000). Realizing there is no way around getting a tow in to the dealer, I call to book a tow for tomorrow morning, and the guy shows up 13.5 hours early. And the last insult of the day was that there were no parking spots left at soccer, so I had to park a good long distance away.

Insert a forceful, ear-searing four-letter word of your choice in ALL CAPS here.

So, come on midnight. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with June 10, 2008, but if it was a car it would be a lemon, if it was a toy it would have lead paint and be recalled, and if it was a horse it would be shot. Screw you, today - I’m going to bed soon.

back from the end of the Blogosphere

I have NOT fallen off the face of the earth. I have simply been busy. “Too busy to blog? Even just a little bit??” Yes, too busy to blog even just a little bit. However, things are moving such that the urge to blog cannot be ignored any longer, thus I will offer up an apologetic and nugget-filled update. (Note that I’m not going as far as promising more regular updates…)

more fun with my nostrils

My neti pot has been very patiently waiting for me since last I posted. The other day something transpired that made me take it up again. Actually, “transpire” is a pretty good word choice (if not entirely accurate in its dual meaning.)

You see, once in a while when I’m eating I’ll swallow slightly funny and some food will get stuck at the back of my throat, and it feels like it’s trying to make its way up my nose from the back. It’s not a pleasant feeling by any means, but the food usually dislodges by itself and I think nothing more of it. This past week, however, I was eating some peanut butter and bread and some bread got stuck. It was quite irritating, so I decided to blow my nose. Lo and behold, I managed to blow a chunk of chewed bread out my right nostril. Yeah.

just to cap the week off

Man, what a week it’s been. Monday I get the offer for the permanent position at work - great stuff. But Tuesday was just as good, if not better. Tuesday morning Jannette’s water broke, so after being at work for all of an hour I went home again. Our 3rd child (Carter Timothy) was born at 1:48pm, coming down the chute at a hefty 10lbs and 10oz! I should mention that Jannette did this the way she did both other kids; at home, and totally drug-free. That’s right, at 10lb baby drug free, and without any tears. Yes, I married SuperMommy.

So I got to spend the week at home, including Valentine’s Day (and the brand-new and upcoming Family Day), but it was all tempered by having the stomach flu go through the entire family. Yes, including me. I spent much of Valentine’s Day gingerly moving around and napping. Thankfully the “ab workout” I got was much shorter than what the kids endured.

Now we’re at the end of the week, we’re all healthy again, the kitchen and laundry are almost under control, and both Mom and Carter are doing very well. It’s really been a heck of a week!