Suspense Magazine's Blog Site

Anxiety at the highest level!

Normally I write about books, movies, etc but I love to give lists.  Well here is something a little different.  I know it is not suspenseful, thriller or mystery, but hopefully it is a little comedy.  These are the Top 10 things I feel are the worst things in the world today (subject to change, in this crazy world).

1.       Talking to a computer when calling in for tech support

I know you have all been there before.  You call up looking for help and what do you find more misery and problems.  It is bad enough that you already have a problem that needs you pick up the phone and ask for help, but when you call, if you can find a number but that is another issue, you get a computer lady.  It is always a lady to, not sure why.  But you call and you need to answer seventeen questions to reach someone to talk to, and if you answer wrong, they hang up on you and you need to start all over again.  I find it funny that now you see Chase Bank actually has a commercial talking about reaching a live person on the first try.  How sad has customer service fallen, when you need to tell people that.  This is what I say you do the next time.  Just call the company on the phone and when you finally reach someone and they say “Hello, can I help you?” just answer them back and say “Nope, I’m just looking”.  See how they handle that response.

2.       Your internet is down, but you can email us for tech support to fix your internet problem.

I will speak of experience on this one.  AT&T is the absolute WORST company, not looking for advertising from them now, at customer service in the entire world.  When you look at their website trying to find phone numbers, I saw something very funny.  While searching on their website, I saw internet tech support.  Now remember, if you need internet tech support, you probably don’t have the internet working, but if you need help connecting to the internet, you can email them.  How freaking stupid is that?  If I could email you, then I wouldn’t need to, CAUSE I HAVE INTERNET SERVICE.  Again, I don’t know if any other companies are this stupid, but I would not be surprised if they are.

3.       Going to Cheesecake factory and they have the calories on the menu.

Ok, why do you go out to eat dinner?  If you are on a diet, are you really going out to eat?  What stupid lawmaker thought this was a good idea to put calories on the menu.  The economy is already bad enough, so let’s have more people not go to restaurants.  There are some things that I think people should not know and this is one of them.  Food and restaurants are not making the country obese.  In the 1950’s and 60’s people were cooking with lard and fat and they never had this problem.  Do you think now with all the organic food out there, we would be thinner?  No, because people aren’t leaving their house, TV, computer, or video games and not exercising.  So, do me a favor and keep the calories OFF my menu when I go out to eat.  I’ve eaten a freaking salad for 6 days now and I want to enjoy my food by going out, so don’t make me feel guilty about it!

4.       Standing in the checkout line and having the person in front of you complain about buying the right things to use the coupon.

Again, this is a place we have all been.  You’ve spent an hour going around the store shopping, looking at your coupons, finding the best deals and now you are ready to get out.  However, you get into the line and what happens?  The person in front of you is arguing with the checkout person about their yogurt coupon so they can get an extra .50 off.  True story, this happened to me.  The lady was very upset and wanted to talk to the manager.  I realized too late, that I had put most of my groceries on the conveyor belt, so it was too late to move.  People started looking around to see what the problem was.  I decided right then and there, in the interest of time and not wanting my ice cream to turn into milk, I told the lady, here let me buy the coupon from you.  So I gave her .50 and took the coupon, ripped it up and threw it away in front of her.  She was very shocked and didn’t say anything, just left.

5.       Walking around and seeing people talking to themselves, then you realize they are all on the phone with their Bluetooth.

I hate cell phones for another reason, but Bluetooth’s get on my nerves.  I’m walking around malls, grocery stores, etc.  I hear people talking but no phone in their hands, so I assume they are crazy.  But then I realize they are talking on their Bluetooth’s.  First people, I don’t want to hear your conversations, and I especially don’t want to see you talking to yourself.  Keep those things in your car.

6.       How many times are you aloud to predict the end of the world, before people finally consider you wacko?

This just made the Top 10 because it is so funny.  First of all, predicting the end of the world has happened for the past thousand years.  However the world has been here for 4 billion years, but this wacko guy is predicting the end of the world.  Now he did this about 17 years ago and was wrong.  Now he said it would happen May 21st, but nothing.  Now he said he misread the bible verse and it is happening on October 21^st.  He forgot to carry the one in his math.  Is really anybody listening to this guy anymore?  If you are, I think you need your head examined.  The end of the world is not coming on October 21^st; do you really think that God would put in a secret message in the bible, like the masons or templar knights?  If so, don’t you think that Steve Berry or Dan Brown would figure it out first, before this guy?

7.       Wireless networks

I’m guilty of this, only because I really have no choice.  I want you to stop and think about how many things you have connected to your home wireless network.  Now we have TV’s that connect to the internet.  The only thing left is an IV to connect to your body, so you are just “in” the internet.  But I have my cell phone, blu-ray player, Xbox, Roku, Laptop, desk top computer and cable box all connected to the internet in my house.  My whole house is so wired, that I can just sing the “State Farm Theme”, just switch up the words, and on my wall google.com appears.  You’re thinking right now, well if you do it why is it the worst thing in the world?  I’m glad you asked that question, cause I’m nuts!  Simple answer, I can’t get away from it.  If you want to steal my identity, it is not difficult, just sit outside my house and connect to my internet, you will see my life sitting in front you.  However, I must warn you, once you get in my head, you might never get out!

8.       The Grammys

Award shows in general are terrible, but I had to pick one, so why not pick this one.  If you didn’t know most of the Grammy’s handed out, you never see.  The award show is a concert of bad lip syncing artists and very little awards.  I’ll admit that I HATE most of the music out there today.  But when Tia Carrere wins a Grammy, look it up it happened this year, for best Hawaiian album, can you take this show and award serious?  If you don’t know who she is, simply look her up and start laughing.  She is now in the same club as Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Elton John and the other great songwriters and artists in history.

9.       The Presidential election

The next round of bad commercials for the Presidential election is right around the corner.  Even when Obama was elected 2 ½ years ago, people already started running for president.  I’m not going into a political rant, but I will say, it doesn’t matter who the president is, because they really can’t do anything to change, well, anything!  Just so you know, the President can only do two things on his own, start a war, but for only 30 days and have heads of state visit the White House and he / or she (don’t want to get into trouble) can visit other countries.  You will start to hear all the candidates say, I can fix this and I can fix that.  No you can’t!  Just remember they all LIE to you.  If you remember that, then it is much easier to vote for the right candidate.  And it is very important to vote, no matter what.  You must also remember that the election is really a sham for the public, because we really don’t elect the President.  The Electoral College does that and they are not bound by the popular vote to give all their votes to that candidate.  So, here we go again, let the lie fest begin for the next 20 months!

10.   Reality shows

Reality shows are a train wreck; we hate them but can’t stop watching them.  How many “Real housewives” from different cities do we need to see?  However the two shows that really cracks me up are “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette”.  All of the people on the show are model material, but they can’t find love.  However, upon meeting this person for the first time, it is love at first sight!  They do everything they can to win over this person and get the rose!  Now in the normal world, this is absurd.  The only thing that is true is that none of these relationships last.  When you have to go on TV and find your mate in front of millions and watch them make out with all 30 people, they are probably not going to stay with you.  Think about it, you go on a date with someone and you get a little dirty, but then at 9:00 pm they have to leave, to go out with someone else and do the same thing.  But the funny part is that you hope they come back to you and give you that rose.  I’m laughing right now just typing this.  Anyway, I can keep going about reality shows, but then it would turn into a book.

I hope you enjoyed my little rant, my psychologist says it is good for me to get these things off my chest.  Now I’m only on five medications, since I’m healing from the inside!  Have a great day and if something bugs you and you need to let loose, simply use your blog site as a way to let it out!

Suspense Magazine (on the lighter side)

Where has the time gone??  It has been a while since my last blog report and for that I’m sorry.  Many things have been going on with the magazine, so I’ll share some of them here.  Well the big news and we have not publicly released this yet, just to you and the subscribers, is that we have decided to become an all digital magazine.  We will no longer print the magazine.  Printing costs are so high that it was becoming increasing difficult to keep up with them.   This move however will make us a much stronger magazine and be able to reach more and more fans.  The best news also is that our magazines will be online forever!!  As with a print issue, it gets read and thrown away, this way all the great interviews and columns can be accessed at anytime.  We had been talking about this ever since the beginning of the year and with Borders going under and Barnes and Noble changing their business model to publishers; we felt the time was right to do this.  If you have an IPad or another tablet, the magazine shines on the pages!!  I’m telling you it is much better than a print version.  Everything is interactive from the Ad’s to the interviews; you are able to check things out much quicker.  Of course it is still available for all readers and electronic.  I don’t know if you know this, but we have to format the magazine four different ways to make sure we hit all the technology based apps out there!  The shout out goes to the creative director, the tireless work she does is second to none.  If anything happens to her, the magazine will die a horrible death!  We also have some great new contributors and articles in the magazine.  We constantly change things up to keep it fresh!  We published Brett Battles first chapter of his latest book “Sick” in the magazine before it was released and it was very popular!!  In fact, we extended this to all the publishers and the response was overwhelming!  You will see two authors each month with their excerpts in the magazine, most all of them are exclusive and before the release date, to give you a taste of the exciting stories coming out!  Well I don’t like to be long winded, so I’ll stop for now.  Talk to you all very soon!  Time to get your fiction on!!

Suspense Magazine