After being at Wal-Mart yesterday when the doors opened, I can completely believe this.

ORANGE CITY, Fla. – A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.

At my store, several fights broke out as a few people tried to leave electronics while a swarm of people tried to push their way into electronics. It was kinda like the world was ending and people were looting Wal-Mart, which is something I never understood. I mean if the world’s ending, why bother looting? It’s not like you can really use the stuff. Sigh. This just reaffirms my disgust with humanity.

JAB

As many of you probably guessed would happen, my creative writing e-zine “Mojo Overload” won’t be happening in the near future. I’ve got a number of other things I’m working on, and I just can’t put my heart into creating another website that I’d have to manage. Creating the look and style of the site would be easy — well, I suppose I should say “was” easy, as the basic look is already made — but trying to keep up with whatever submissions I’d get, as well as putting out a regular issue would overburden my already limited time resources.

I would like to get it running sometime next year. That is the plan, and I am not abandoning the concept forever — just for the time being. Though if you’re interested, you can click here and see what might have been.

JAB

After work yesterday, I borrowed my Pop’s truck and helped Nate and Erin move into their shiny new house. The move wasn’t that bad, partly since I was only there for the last fourth of it. And while it was cold, there was almost zero wind, so it didn’t feel that bad out.

There’s an upside and a downside to them moving. The downside is I now have to drive about twenty minutes (taking the low-way) to get to their house, which is in Huber Heights. The upside is their house is in Huber Heights, and no longer in Trotwood. I don’t think I need to say why that’s a good thing.

After we finished moving around 10 pm, I stayed the night to break in their new house. Nate was feeling quite poorly — he’s allergic to cats and the house’s previous owners had six cats — but at least Erin, Ashley (who also helped move), and I had a good time. It was shitty, though — Nate and went later that night to find some type of strong allergy medicine for him, and all the stores were closed, even Cub Foods, which had a big sign plastered on the front door that said “Open 24 Hours on Thanksgiving Day.”

Today I came home at 10 am freakin’ exhausted (I got very little sleep) and napped until 1:30. I ate lots of turkey and mashed ‘taters a little later, then sat and read for a few hours. I’m going to bed in a few short hours since I’m still tired and also because I work at 5 am tomorrow. Oh yeah, baby, it’s blitz day at Wal-Mart tomorrow, and all the crazies will be out in force trying to get a deal. Personally, I’d rather spend a little more and just order it off the Internet. Certainly saves me a lot of hassle.

So that was my Thanksgiving. How was yours, dear reader?

JAB

After receiving several complaints about having to list your email address when you comment on an entry, I finally sat down to figure out how to fix this little problem. Turns out, all I had to do was check a little box in my set-up configuration that basically said “Do not require email addresses on comments.”

So I checked the box and now you don’t have to give out your email address anymore.

Let the rejoicing begin.

JAB

I’m feeling real tired right now, and I’m not sure why. I slept well last night, and I didn’t do anything strenuous today, so I should be fine. Maybe I’m like Edward Norton in Fight Club, and an alternate personality takes me over at night, and lives an exciting, dangerous life to make up for my easy, routine-filled life. Speaking of, I wanna watch that movie again sometime.

So today I went to some mall in Cincinnati with the fam. We did a bunch of shopping. Correction — they did a lot of shopping, I got a shirt. After shopping, we ate at Burbank’s, and goddamn was it awesome. Burbank’s is, like, the greatest restaurant in the universe. It was also nice to see Burbank’s busy. Last few times I was there, it was nearly empty, so I’m always afraid that it’ll go out of business. But they’re in the midst of remodeling, so I’m taking that as a sign that they won’t be shutting down soon.

It’s now time to go read and then watch “Alias.” See ya.

JAB

Whew. I spent the better part of the evening rewriting “An Era Reborn,” and I just finished. Considering that it was a story I wrote when I was still in high school, it still stands up pretty well, at least story-wise. The quality of the writing, however, was still only that of a kid in high school. So what I did tonight was go through the story and make it more the main character’s. I had told a lot of the story in far-out third person, meaning that you don’t really get inside the characters’ heads. Tonight I made it so that it’s told from Avatar’s perspective, allowing you read what his thoughts are on what’s occuring in the story. It adds a little bit more weight to the events that happen.

I also fixed a few things that have been vexing me for some time, like “why the hell does everyone have a bizarre name?” In addition, I made the huge clumps of exposition detailing Avatar and his band of merry men part of the story, so that it all flows better. As a whole, I think the story is a thousand times better than is was.

In the next few days, I’m gonna send “An Era Reborn” out to some magazines and see if maybe they’ll publish it. It would be nice to say I’m a “published writer” instead of an “aspiring writer.”

JAB

Holy shit, I’d forgotten how much I love Army of Darkness. I haven’t seen the movie in several years, and I think my VHS copy of the movie is stll at Sean Maga’s house. It doesn’t matter, ’cause now I got it on DVD — the “Boomstick Edition” no less (which was supposed to cost thirty bucks, yet Best Buy had it for eighteen), that features both the theatrical edition as well as the Director’s Cut, which contains fifteen minutes of cut footage edited back in.

I think the best part about the movie is Bruce Campbell’s wholly over-the-top performance as Ash, with his eminently quotable dialogue and great facial expressions. Sadly though, I still haven’t seen the first two Evil Dead movies. I’m gonna have to remember to do that sometime this winter break.

I was planning on working on my novel this morning, in lieu of studying for my Finance exam, like I should have been; instead of doing either, I watched a movie. So now I must go force myself to try to decipher my Finance notes.

JAB

I overslept today, for the first time this quarter, on what was arguably the worst day to do so. Fortunately, I didn’t miss my Statistics final, though I did have to move my ass at lightspeed to make it. Not a fun thing, waking up thirty minutes later than you wanted to, and being in the car ten minutes after that.

I’ve got one exam left, in Finance on Thursday. Then I’m done until January, baby!

JAB

This month, aside from my new column, there’s also a new photo up. Ooh, neat!

The column consists of me rambling on for some time about how JBdN came to be. The following are the first couple of paragraphs of “History Lessons”:

Since the one year birthday of JOSH BALES dot NET has recently passed (October 4), I thought I’d devote a column to exploration of how JBdN came to be.

It all began in May of 2000 with a little site called Elephantitic Monkey. As I’ve said before, the name was derived from the image of a monkey carting his grossly oversized testicles around in a wheelbarrow. EM was inspired by my friend Todd’s website, Disjointed Thoughts, Paranoia. It started out as something to occupy my time, and I posted short stories, columns, and some art, all done by some friends and myself. Unfortunately, it also had a message board, which wasn’t unfortunate at first, but became so when people (myself included) started only to come to the site for it. Eventually, I decided to create a new site, one without a message board so that people would be forced only to read the tripe that I put up (Ironically enough, the message board site went out of business a month later). So over the course of Christmas Break 2000 and January of 2001, I designed a new site, and on January 25, 2001, Stranded on the Edge of Infinity was launched.

To read the rest of it, click here.

JAB

Lindsey’s in Indianapolis with the band, as are my parents who are watching her perform, and I have the house all to myself.

Bwa-ha-ha-HA-HA!

Now I can do all the bad things I can’t do when my parents are around, like leave on a lot of the lights in the house, and watch TV with the surround sound turned way up. Oh, yeah — I’m a rebel.

Today was my last day of regular classes. I have two exams next week, and then I’m done with school until January 5th of 2004. I’m not sure what my grades are gonna be like this quarter; I have at least one guaranteed “A,” with another one a possibility. I kinda stopped caring the past week or two, so that may hurt my chances of doing well. Fortunately for me, apathy is my best friend.

So yeah, the house is mine until Sunday, so if you wanna come over at any time, just let yourself in. And if the doors are locked, just bust out a window.

Party at Josh’s.

JAB

P.S. – Please don’t break my windows. I hate to sweep up glass.