Okay, well I was having some problems there for a moment. Seems my home router was blocking the tmesismag.com domain (which means I couldn’t access the website, including my blog, my email or the ftp). I tried restoring the router to its factory configurations, but I can’t figure out what’s wrong.

Anyway, I can connect now by bypassing my router and connecting directly through to the modem or by stealing my neighbor’s wireless with my lappy. (Mostly the latter.)

So, once again, I’ll see you back over at rwong.tmesismag.com!

Ray

All right, so there’s a slight bit of problem with the new domain… my home router is blocking it for some reason. I concluded this after a back and forth discussion between me and my ISP and web host reps.

I’ve got to fix this problem so I don’t have to keep switching my network wires to reach the website or to read my email or to work its FTP. What a drag.

Ray

rwong.tmesismag.com

There ya have it. I won’t be posting here anymore, so you’ll have to check my new website/blog.

Take care all!

Ray

You read right: tmesismag.com

We just have a temporary page up right now because we’re still finishing up our writing and editing phase, but soon we’ll start laying out the web pages. When that happens, I’ll have my own page there and I’ll likely move this blog over if I don’t create a spankin’ new one.

Ray

Hey folks, a bunch of exciting news on my end. 1) There are names to my magazine and publishing firm now. (The one my colleagues and I have created.) Tmesis Magazine, published by Sub Arbor Publishing, featuring Inter Bellum - a Retro Punk Serial Thriller. 2) We have a web domain registered and have signed up with a web host. After we finish writing our stories, we’re going to get a website up and start laying out our printed magazine. After that, we may need to come up with some sort of business plan…

Some more exciting news: I’ve finally finished Chapter 1 of my collaborative serial story! But it ended up being over 7,000 words, which might be too long for the printed magazine. I’ll probably have hack away at it to trim it to size. (It needs editing anyway.) I wish I could find someone to read and review it for me though, if only to tell me that it’s too boring. Good readers are hard to find these days.

Ray

It seems that no matter the place I go to hang out, I can’t find any peace. At one of the local coffee shops, there’s a guy who likes to chitchat. It wouldn’t be so bad if the topic of conversation weren’t completely uncalled for.

“Hi Ray.”
“Hey Adam, how’s it going.”
“Not bad. Not bad. I just got some medication for my toenail fungus.”
“That’s… yeah.”

At the newer coffee shop that just opened up, things are pretty quiet. Save for the staff, I mean. A bunch of high school girls talking about their boyfriends and how much they cry. If I were a better writer, I’d be listening in and taking down dialogue. But I’m not, so nuts to that.

Ray

Wrote a little essayish article about the writing block that Kevin and I have been tackling. You can find it here, at the KUWW blog.

Um… :D

Ray

For a while now, I’ve been a bit of a tea freak. (As it stands, my favorite is still Cinnamon Apple Spice by Celestial Seasonings.) There’s nothing I enjoy more than sitting down with a cup of tea and a good book. But in my journey to find great tasting tea, I often come across flavors that are pretty wretched.

While looking for my beloved Apple Spice down the tea isle of Wegmans, I came across a line of holiday teas that Celestial Seasonings has put out for Christmas. One of the flavors that drew me in was Gingerbread Spice. Man, I love gingerbread, I thought to myself. Well, gingerbread is fine when it’s not in tea form. I tried a little of it the other day, and it tasted like I steeped cardboard in water. There’s an overpowering bitter flatness to it - it’s almost nauseating. Today, I tried it again with a little sugar and it was slightly better, but it still had that strange flavor to it. I hope the Nutcracker Sweet one isn’t as bad, though I have the sneaking suspicion it is. When the name of the flavor suggests that the tea is as tasty as a hand-carved wooden doll, I begin to wonder.

One tea they did do alright with was their Chai. Of course it’s not as good as making it fresh with cinnamon sticks and cloves, but it comes close. Steep it for a good 4-5 minutes, add just a few drops of cream and a spoon full of sugar or honey, and you’re good to go. I’m usually not a lover of commercial teas, but Celestial Seasonings is doing pretty alright for themselves, despite their shortcomings.

Ray

A new Java’s Brewin’ recently opened up not too far from my neighborhood. It came with a new strip mall that seemed to spring up out of nowhere. I didn’t notice it until a couple weeks ago because they built it in this tucked-away area by the railroad tracks, where a light commercial zone exists. That’s good news for me because hardly anyone is ever there. It’s mostly quiet aside from the bubbly teenagers behind the counter, but it’s not too much of a distraction. I like to go there to do my writing now. I know, it’s cliche - writing at the cafe - but it’s nigh impossible to do it at home with someone asking me questions about things every 15 minutes.

Since this place is so close to my neighborhood, I’ve decided that I’m going to walk there from now on. For a while now, I think I’ve been with a lack of enough cardio exercise, so it all works out. But even though it’s only about 2 miles away, the route’s kind of perilous. In this one particular part, I need to walk through an underpass, with railroad tracks above and the road running underneath. There’s barely a platform there for people to walk across, and it’s narrow as it is with the road shrunk so that it can fit through. Coming out of the underpass on the other end, there is no sidewalk or anything, just a steep bank with lots of bushes and twigs and stuff; you kind of have to wait on the side until the road is all clear and then run up it until you get to an open lawn. There is a safer route that bypasses this, but it tags on an extra mile to the walk. Here are some pictures I took of my town, which I’m showing you for some unspecified reason:

Powerline alley	Suburban blight
A Germerican retailer	Route 27/Lincoln Highway/The Great Trade Route

You can probably judge from the pictures that it’s a peaceful enough trip, especially if you go in the morning. Sometimes I still drive all the way down to Main Street to sit at Brewed Awakening because the food there is just top knotch, but it’s become less of a cool place since the construction started in the area. It’s been destroying the otherwise great ambiance.

So, recently I’ve been working on my new story for the Prometheus Project. (It’ll have it’s own website soon.) It will be part of a collaborative work where an over-arching story will be told from three different perspectives (and by three different authors). The story is set in an alternate-period 1930s where the first World War ends in a stalemate, and Germany comes out as the world’s new technological titan. My main character, Renata, is an Austro-American who has travelled to Austria for the first time in search of a person she once knew, but thought she had lost to the war. I won’t give any more away, but the first issue of Prometheus will be out soon as a free webzine and a limited print, and it will showcase the story.

That’s all for now!

Ray

The owner of a stolen bike finds said bike parked on a street corner. Instead of seeking help to reclaim it, he tapes on a furious message.
(Full story here)

A picture-story behind the conflict in Burma.
(Full story here)

This is wrong, immoral, and unwholesome. But get enough exercise afterwards, and I suspect you’d be just fine. This anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus will be displayed at the Proposition Gallery in Manhattan. The sculptor attempted to show it off at the Chelsea art gallery some time ago, but protesters disapproved and kept it in storage. The original got eaten by rats, but here we have a freshly made replica. Providing over 7,000% of the required daily value of cholesterol, it is a rich source of holy heart clogs.
(Full story here)

Virgin Galactic is a new space-tourism company owned by Virgin Atlantic Airways owner Richard Branson. This base station, built in New Mexico, will soon be the gateway for rich space enthusiasts to shuttle off into the heavens.
(Full story here)

-Ray