The best intentions and all that…

I’ve been incredibly busy!  Between keeping my head above water at the day job, and working on my side business(es) at night, it feels like I barely have any free time.  This, of course, did not keep me from watching the first FOUR seasons of Dr. Who on Netflix over the past 2 weeks (I was skeptical at first, but OMG I<3 it).

Just to play a quick game of catch up:

- I’ve started working on my music PR related business

- Been doing some gigs at Fiverr.com this month and making decent money.  It’s not a good long term goal, but it has been a SUPER way to jump into dealing with customers and some of the problems that come with doing business that you really don’t get to experience without selling your time/a product.  There will be a longer, more in-depth post about this in the future, surely.

- Practicing sleeping.  How goofy does that sound?  But there have been many many articles on, not only the benefits of sleep for your productivity, but your actual factual health.  So I’ve been focused lately on getting to bed by 11 p.m., which means no more staying up late and doing things (like writing blog posts).

I’m going on a trip to Florida on the 26th to see my family.  Super excited for that!  Hopefully I’ll have some time to write, then, and post some pictures of beaches and palm trees and storms of a tropical nature.

Until then, here is a picture of train tracks and a sign that says “derail.”  Probably the best thing I saw in April.

Last night I attended the reading and puppet show by Mary Robinette Kowal, who was in town on her way to Chicago.  She stopped by Weller Book Works and, in a mostly period-correct gown, did an amazing job of reading from Chapter 2 of Glamour in Glass, as well as performing a puppet show called The Broken Bridge.

If you ever want to watch a master performer, and also feel bad about your own sad lack of reading skills (unless you happen to be Ken Scholes, I guess), be sure to catch Mary doing a reading sometime.  Put it on your bucket list.

After the reading and the puppet show, it was time for Q&A.  Here’s the game:

I snapped this picture of Mary while she was talking about something, but I won’t say what.  I want you to guess!

Look at the passion that comes through–what could the topic be?  [If you were there last night, don't give it away!]

Enter your guess in the comments below

Ready for the answer?  Here it is.

Google it.

There are a lot of people angry with Experian over fraudulent charges, and I just became one of them.

There are two types of pissed off people:

1.) People who ordered their credit report for $1, and then canceled the scheduled credit monitoring charge, only to have that $19.95 charge appear month after month after month.

2.) People whose accounts get charged by Experian who NEVER SIGNED UP FOR ANY KIND OF SERVICE FROM THERE.

I am in the second group.  See, here’s what happens.

Some one, somehow (maybe through sheer guessing and entering random numbers: they have bots for that) gets your credit card number and enters it at Experian.com to get a free credit report.  If one does not cancel the credit monitoring service one is automatically enrolled in a $19.95 per month service.

Experian.com is a CREDIT MONITORING SERVICE.  Do you understand how cosmically stupid that is?  They do not require any more details than the 16 digit credit card number to charge your card.  Kind of gives you a lot of confidence in their ability to monitor your credit if they have thousands of these fraudulent charges, right?  Fail.

So I called them, and after a lengthy hold, talked to a nice woman who helped me reverse the charge and cancel any future charges.  Hopefully this works, but with the shady way they operate, one never knows.  You can be sure I’m watching my pending charges like a hungry dog watches a box of snausages.

If you’re searching for how to get this problem fixed, because you also got charged:

Here is how to get Experian.com charges reversed

- Call (714) 830-7000 for Experian customer service.  You will probably put on hold right away for nearly 10 minutes.  Suck it up and stay on the call.

- Tell them why you called (fraudulent charges appeared on your credit card account

- Stay on hold as they transfer you to the department that handles this.  Funny story: they could not tell me the direct number of this department when I asked.

- Tell the person very clearly there is a fraudulent charge on your account for a credit report, and you want the $1 charge reimbursed, as well as MAKING SURE THAT NO FURTHER CHARGES APPEAR.

- Tell them you know that after a 7 day trial period you will be charged $19.95, and you want to make sure that doesn’t happen because YOU DID NOT PURCHASE ANY SERVICE FROM THEM AND THIS IS FRAUD.

- Sit through the part where they ask you if you know the first name of the person who initiated the charge (mine was Carla), and say, nicely, OF COURSE I DON’T.  THIS IS A FRAUDULENT CHARGE.

- Stay on hold while they talk to their supervisor.  They will return and tell you everything is good to go.

- Try not to ask them if they know how eternally STUPID AND/OR HILARIOUS it is that a credit monitoring company has such a problem with credit card fraud.  One of your best weapons in situations like this is being FIRM but NICE.

- Then call your bank, and let them know what’s up.

Hope it works for you.  Hell, I hope it works for me, too.

My story, Shatter Shatter has been turned into an audio story, and is now available for your listening pleasure.

Just click the cake to listen!

Tina Connolly, who runs Toasted Cake and reads the stories did an A-MAZE-ING job.

So go listen, it’s a mere 7 1/2 minutes long, and you’ll love it.  I don’t guarantee it, but I think it’s highly likely…

BONUS

But wait, there’s more!  I think art is for consuming AND interacting with.  As such, I’ve licensed my story to be re-used and modified (see licensing info below for the specifics).  I want you to take the story and make something out of it.  Some ideas of what you could do:

• Make a sock puppet show with the podcast as a sound track.
• Illustrate a scene from the story, or make a “book cover.”
• Auto tune it and make it into a hit song.
• Write your own song inspired by the story.
• Pick your favorite scene and make macaroni art of it.

The possibilities are LITERALLY unlimited.

Why should you do this?  Well, because it’s fun and awesome to do ART.  But also, because I’ll give $40 (via paypal) to my favorite entry, and Toasted Cake will paypal $5 to an entry deserving an Honorable Mention.

Final result will be judged by me, because it’s my party.

How to Enter

1. Send your remixed art to contest (AT) seanm.co
2. Indicate if you’d be okay with me posting your art on my website (even if you don’t win, I’d like to share some of the results)
3. If you are indicating  you’d like to share, be sure to leave a domain where I can link to for credit.

That’s it.  You have 1 week.  I will be picking the winner on Monday, April 16th Monday April 23rd.

P.S. If you win this, you will obvious have to be okay with me posting your art here for the results post.  Cool?

Go forth, and listen to the story!  And then do art.

License Info:

Shatter Shatter by Sean Markey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at toastedcake.com.

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Recently, I discovered the joys of hiking.

Today, after embarking on an adventure (starting my novel), I went for an hour long hike along Bonneville Shoreline Trail.  The sun was setting; it was completely lovely.

In other news: I have an astigmatism and have to wear glasses now.  Thumbs down!

Here are some pics.

me at 5,120 ft.

Spring in Utah is like this:

And then it’s like this:

From mid 60′s to snowing and freezing.  The weather is kind of like an adventure with superheroes.

In other news, I had a pretty fantastic birthday last weekend.  Beth and I went out to breakfast, got some gluten free cupcakes from a local bakery, and later that night, had dinner out at the delicious and dive-y Red Iguana.  Fantastic!

Due to trying to be healthy, I don’t drink chocolate milk EVERY SING MORNING like I used to, but I miss.  So I let myself have a treat on St. Patrick’s Day a.k.a. my birthday, and had one.  It was big, and it looked like this:

BIG.

For my birthday present, the coolest, most awesome wife ever rented a lovely ground floor apartment in a Victorian style house in Salt Lake for the weekend, and we are going to go have our own mini writing retreat.  What a creative, fun present.  Lucky me!

Speaking of writing, I recently sold a reprint to the too-cool Toasted Cake Podcast.  The story, “Shatter Shatter,” first appeared in a recently closed-down online zine.  I’m glad this little story gets another chance to be seen (and heard!).  I’ll post when there’s something else to say about it.  In the mean time, go check out Toasted Cake and enjoy good fiction!

###

Finally, here is a picture of a very stoic cat in a box.

Deriving enjoyment from getting older, for me at least, is a bit of a bell curve.  Where am I at, right now, on that curve?  Dunno.  Hindsight: 20/20, future not as clear.  I’ll be able to answer you in a few years, I guess.

At 29, everyone older than me tells me I’m young, but to me, the kids I teach are young.  There’s a whole lot of life and wisdom (and stupidity, I guess) that happens between 16 and 29.  Age is all about relativity, then.

Because birthdays, to me, are a pretty stern reminder of mortality and the ever increasing loss of youth, I try and make a big deal out of mine, because it’s also an opportunity to realize how far I’ve come and the impact I’ve made on the world, however small.  So tomorrow I’m going to act like a 10 y.o sometimes, because IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, GODDAMNIT!  Im going to celebrate my existence!

Cake For Everybody!

I’ll leave you now, not with some profound salutation, but with one of my favorite comics, EVER, which happens to be about birthday.

Enjoy “Birthday Skeleton.”

birthday skeleton SOURCE

Couple of interesting things related to Kurt Cobain popped up recently, so I figured three things make a post.

I’m not a huge fan of Nirvana… I guess I’m not a medium fan either.  I’m more interested in Kurt Cobain himself than his music (though I do enjoy a few songs).

 I Found it Hard, Was Hard to Find…

Would people say he changed the entire face of music if he hadn’t died?

Probably.

Would he have ended up pissing a bunch of people off and not have had the huge following of posthumously adoring fans?

Also probably.

His disdain for fame and for the music that pushed him into the spotlight is fascinating.  To read his suicide letter, you get the impression he had a ocean’s worth of passion hidden somewhere inside himself, but he had no idea how to tap into it.  You can hear him trying though; it’s kind of painful to read.

For example when we’re back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can’t fool you, any one of you. It simply isn’t fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I’m having 100% fun.

If you want to read his suicide not, though, you can do that here.  [I'm not going to really get into all of the controversy surrounding the note.  Doesn't everything have its own conspiracy theory now?].

Top of the Pops

I guess the UK t.v. show Top of the Pops likes to use a soundtrack when having their guests play “live,” but with live vocals.  This has caused a bit of conflict in the past for other artists.  However, when Nirvana was the guest on Top of the Pops, they protested the requirement to sing live to a backing track by CLEARLY NOT PLAYING THEIR INSTRUMENTS, and by Kurt Cobain dropping his voice to Morrisey-esque octaves and changing the lyrics for hilarious results.  I kind of love this a lot:

A Capella

And finally, here is a studio track of just vocals from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Enjoy.

HEY EVERYONE!

The Games of Thrones Season 1 FINALLY has a release date.  It only took about a year (since the first episode debuted), but the entire first season will be released on March 6, 2012.

It’s about $30 for the regular DVD (more for HD).  I haven’t seen any information about digital episodes yet, but I’m sure they will exist.  THIS IS THE FUTURE, after all.

You can order the DVD from Amazon.  I cannot wait to watch these.  Finally.

Edit:  Found info on the streaming videos as well (which is what I will be buying).

Finally had the video camera out today to film a video for Beth’s shivanata project. It’s actually a lot of fun o shoot video, but there are a few moments of frustration.

We had dinner at a local all-you-can-eat sushi place to celebrate. When you have a task on your list that causes you much grief and you avoid it for MONTHS, a treat or a reward is definitely in order.