Winter Wonderland at minimum wage.

The weather outside is frightful and all that good mess. It was beginning to snow as I was leaving my temp job recently and one of my co-workers commented, "let's hope it sticks." I'm thinking to myself, "we just worked two short weeks in a row so you people just make less than your requisite $265. a week but you wanna miss more work?" As the guy who made comment is standing out in the snow, waiting for his carpool to arrive?

Happy New Year at minimum wage.

At my “regular” job I’m a Merchandising Representative. If the title sounds snazzy, I’m here to explain the deception of snazzy titles. Merchandising Rep. only means that I’m employed as a whippin’ boy for a third party vendor. Simply, my employer sells their product to a big box retailer and I travel to these stores to merchandise and, or represent the product. Too further complicate matters; I’m employed by a nursery, a vendor and grower of flowering plants and other landscape material.

Of course, flowers and landscape plants only sell during warm weather, so I’ve taken a job through a Temp. Service too supplement my income this winter. This job is at the distribution warehouse for a local media wholesaler. My co-workers are also employees of the Temp. Agency and they are nothing if not consistent. They are consistently entertaining, to me, and consistently criminally negligent. (More on criminal negligence later.)

At the warehouse we “sort” the media all day. This is much like sorting produce, putting apples with apples etc., but the media is sorted by the title. One day we were sorting some travel guides, the title was Barcelona. I made some comment like; “I would love to visit Barcelona,” to which my co-worker replied, “I’ve never heard of it.”

If I could only write as consistently as these people entertain me I'd have a real bang-up blog.

Holiday Press Release

We, foolishly, had some major errors in the F.R.I. office computer. These errors kept the computer at the repair shop for nearly a month but we hope to continue normal operations soon.

In the mean time, Happy New Year to everyone!

Paperback Friday: Butler & Carter

Erewhon by Samuel Butler
First published in 1872.
This edition published 1996, Wordsworth Editions Limited.
Erewhon is one of the 501 Must Read Books and I aquired it through Paperback Swap.


Sky Pirates of Callisto; Copyright 1973 Lin Carter.
Published by Dell Publishing Co. Inc, First printing January 1973.
I found this one at McKays Used Books in Knoxville for 90 cents.


When the Green Star Calls; Copyright 1973 Lin Carter.
First printing July 1973 Daw Books, also found at McKays for 75 cents.


The Years Best Fantasy Stories: 2; Copyright 1976 Daw Books, Inc.
First printing August 1976.
I found this one at the Sweetwater, Tn. Flea Market for $1.oo.


The Barbarian of World's End: The fourth book of the Gonwane Epic.
Copyright 1977 Lin Carter. First printing May 1977 Daw Books.
This one is probably from McKays too.

F.R.I. Year End Report

This first week of November seems as good a time as any for the 2010 Year End Report for Fanatical Recycling Inc.

1. The problem with T-shirt Tuesday is keeping track of the shirts that have already been featured. Hopefully, this problem will be resolved during the remaining days of the 2010 calendar year so that T-shirt Tues. can click along in 2011.

2. Paperback Friday should resume this Friday, NOv. 12th.

3. What I'm reading: I'm actually finishing The High King by Lloyd Alexander. I hardly ever read any series of books in order but I've read the last four books of this series since the beginning of Oct. I suppose I'll finish reading Janet Evanovich's How I Write next. The book is literally about how she writes, as it is mainly passages, as example, from her Stephanie Plum books. I have read none of Evanovich's novels but if syrupy romance is your thing, How I Write may be an effective learning tool for you. This stuffs not really my area of interest, I discovered this book while working at a book warehouse earlier this year.

4. Scott, one of our fellow OSR bloggers has mentioned a personal ban on buying books in 2011. This is a policy which I also need to adopt. Knox, Co. Tn. is blessed with the most amazing used book warehouse, Mckay Used Books. I'm always able to find great deals on old paperbacks there, usually at prices from $2.00 to less than $1.00. This has allowed me to purchase no less than five books each month. I have a bookshelf full of books and need to buy no more in 2011, with a few exceptions. I'll write of the exceptions as they occur.

5. What is Fanatical Recycling Inc? F.R.I. was created as a writing outlet for ideas and opinions which are not related to table top role playing games, related literature, ideas or new rpg material. F.R.I. has become a journal of my personal interests, beer, music, old paperbacks, Margaritas, travel, etc.

I had hoped to use F.R.I. to write about my opinions of modern culture. I can't say that I have political opinions; I can only say that I have a philosophy. I have learned that other people rarely listen to "philosophical" ideas which they do not already share and this has placed my philosophies into the deep recesses of my personal consciousness. Perhaps, throughout 2011, I will be able to record some of these opinions and philosophies through F.R.I.

6. Welcome to Zanazaz our second, visible, F.R.I. follower.

7. Lastly, this is my 95th blog post since I started blogging on Oct. 29, 2009. That's nearly two blog articles each week and it is a lot more writing than I was doing before I started the Polyhedral Dicebag blog.

Paperback Friday: Bradbury -- Brunner

Three to the Highest Power; Ray Bradbury, Chad Oliver & Theodore Sturgeon
Copyright 1968 William F. Nolan. First Avon printing February 1968.
Dedication: For Anthony Boucher, who discovered Oliver and promoted Bradbury and Sturgeon.

I found this one at the Friends of the Knox Co. Library sale a few years ago and read it right away. The book contains one short story by each of these authors and is excellent old school Sci-Fi reading.

The Elfstone of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Copyright 1982 Terry Brooks. First Mass Market Edition: Published by Ballantine Books January, 1984.

I got this book for twenty-five cents in Birmingham, Al, sometime between 2001 – 2005 but haven’t read it yet.



The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
Copyright; 1972 Brunner Fact and Fiction, Ltd. Fourth printing by Ballantine Books May, 1976.
I got this one at the Friends of the K. C. L. sale too. I imagine I’ll read it soon since it’s one of the 501 must read books.

Do you know this man?

Mr. Thompson visited Knoxville this past Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010 and this year he brought his band along. Richard Thompson is one of a handfull of musicians which Sally and I try to see every time they come to town and he never fails to earn my limited entertainment dollars. He and his band could certainly give younger musicians a run for their money. In my rather critical opinion, any younger pop or rock musicians who are not paying attention to Richard Thompson should just hand up their insturmants.

The following video, I believe, is from a performance just eleven days ago on 10.4.2010. For further reading, there is this little bit that I wrote on my, now, rpg blog earlier this year.