A Clarification, or Three

There are a few search terms that keep appearing in my Google Analytic's report and I would like to clarify them so as to help you find what you are looking for.

1) What is an underling?

Well Merriam-Webster Dictionary categorizes and "underling" as: One who is under the orders of another.

In a sense we are all underlings unless you are the President of the United States but then again even he has a wife to deal with, so yes we are all underlings.

Official Definition of "underling" for Grumbling of an Underling is hereby: Everyone in the world.

2) Neil Gaiman's girlfriend is Amanda "Fucking" Palmer (twitter @amandapalmer) she looks like this:

She makes music, usually sad, but is really cool to see in concert (scroll down). You should be happy for Neil.

3) a. In entering "Kevin Doyle" into Google you have come here. More than likely you are looking for an Irish soccer star by the same name, sadly I am not he. Try Google again and click any link other than this one you will get something about him. He looks like this:

As you can see I bare little resemblance to him. Although I do bare a striking resemblance to this guy.

b. You Googled (a word that is surprisingly not a word in Google's spell check) "Kevin Doyle green" in which case you were surprised to find that I advocate things such as the invasions of Mexico and Canada to guarantee our energy independence. That's because you are looking for Kevin L Doyle the professor of Green Energy (kevinLdoyle@gmail.com) and not a college kid begging for a job. Speaking of which....

c. If you have come to my blog through doing research about me in order to decide if I am worthy of offering a job you should know that I will never sell out to the man and give up this blog.




OK that's a lie, I would willingly stop and even delete this blog if it meant a full time job. What? If this blog only ends up being a way to get a job through deleting it then I see it as a win.

What I Just Read: American Gods

Before we get into the book just an overall formatting change of how I am going to approach books from now on. Why I thought you needed two posts per book I have no idea, so I am no longer going to give you the book cover review and my thoughts going into the book. Instead I am going to lump them in with the review after the book, the result being one large post on; my thoughts going into the book, the cover, and my overall review.

I know what you are thinking "How will we know what you are reading?!?!?!" do not worry yourself about that, I will still continue to give John Lennon a frined in the What I Am Currently Reading list in the left hand column but instead of linking to a post it will link to the Wikipedia page of the book or the author. That being said there may be a spoiler in the at link, so consider this your spoiler alert.

Again for those of you who were not reading:

CONSIDER THIS YOUR SPOILER ALERT FOR ALL LINKS UNDER "WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING"!!!!!

If you are like 99.9% of the people on the planet and have no desire to be updated about what books I am reading and what my opinions are then I apologize for the last couple paragraphs.

Anyway on with the show.

Katy loves Neil Gaiman, so much so that when she found through his Twitter (his tweets are the reason she is on Twitter in the first place) that he was just down the street enjoying some museum time with his girl friend Amanda Palmer (or as she calls herself Amanda Fucking Palmer) she almost ran out the door.

Speaking of Neil Gaiman's girlfriend Amanda Palmer (twitter handle: @amandapalmer) Katy and I each won tickets to her secret show in Cambridge via Twitter. The show was more than enjoyable, and even if you do not care for her music her personality more than makes up for it. This show, being no more than 200 people there, was all request with her staple "Ask Amanda" segment being mixed in. "Ask Amanda" involves the audience submitting a bunch of questions and Amanda picking a few to answer. Let's just say one question lead to us knowing which boob Neil Gaiman prefers (the left one) and the name of her boobs' musical act "Titter and the Plus One's".

Anyway the point is Katy loves Neil Gaiman and because of that she made me read his book American Gods. Now yes Katy is slightly crazy and her recent choices of audio books have been a little suspect (the ones that involve vampires) but her past recommendations have been spot on (Lolita, Everything Is Illuminated, The Corrections ) so I was not all that worried.

I would like to say that I very rarely shut out the rest of the world in order to read a book. I believe all of the Harry Potter series and Dune were the only books to invoke that trait of mine. American Gods showed shades of that which involved me angering Katy by reading at the dinner table (though I must say she had been on my case to read it for months and then she gets mad when I put it down?). What I am trying to say is, I enjoyed it. Thoroughly.

Then again it is hard to imagine not enjoying a book that takes Gods from all over the world and gives them human traits such as greed, alcoholism, lust and anger, among others. Besides that there is not much I can say that will not spoil the story, other than that Mr. Gaiman writes with the ability of a classic Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer but in a modern day and adult fashion, if that makes sense. Just read the book, you will enjoy it, and if you don't enjoy it then you have no soul.

As for the cover, it is a decent cover, nothing jaw dropping about it but it suits it's purpose. At first you pass you wonder what it has to do with Gods. After reading it you wonder why that house? To which I tell you it's a stock photo from Getty Images.

Next book up is An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes In New England by Brock Clarke, yes it's a novel and not an actual guide to burn by. Came highly recommended by a few people, I will report back when I inevetably finish it, that is of course unless you are a book about John Lennon.

New BANNER!!!!!!!!

There is a new banner above. It's funny. You should sit there and chuckle to yourself for a few moments. Not too long though, because that might be considered a bit creepy.

For the original photo, and how it was created, check out Katy's blog for the details

This Weeks Hefty Helping of Little Grumblings: 4/3 - 4/9

This week we here at Grumbling of an Underling are changing things up a bit. What's going to happen is that the little grumblings will be fed steroids once a week, meaning that most of the little grumblings will come with extra thoughts (marked in read) and a link or two. The reasons for this are: 1. I started using Twitter to publish quick thoughts that I might expand on later, this is my actually implementing the second part of that, 2. Katy came home Monday night and because of that I have not been writing which leads in to 3. Classes are ending, Easter is here and I won't have time to write and I feel bad giving you just Tweets that I have already posted on Twitter.

That being said I plan on continuing this each week and if there is a better format than posting my extra thoughts in read leave it in the comment section. Enjoy.

And as always the ones that are not witty I did not write.

• I was stupid in thinking that there would be no line at Umberto's at noon. Shame on me, I should know better. (Galleria Umberto's is the best place for lunch, and no I will not take your questions or comments)
  
• I would have had my own personal backstage "tour" of the moe. set if I had only not looked confused as to where the box office was. Damn. (Confession, I don't listen to moe.)
  
• 1 Shift remaining
• I am no longer employed by Borders Inc. (More on this here)
  
• Opens Door:"Wow it smells nice in here........aww shit I left the candle burning all day again!" Luckily I had an apartment to come home to. (I did this again two days later)
  
• Kevin thinks he is getting sick, his solution? Mac and Cheese.
• How does one seek sanctions against a country that's biggest business is making homemade rockets? (At what point do we say enough is enough in regards to North Korea, and no I do not mean bomb the shit out of them because we all know you can't draw blood from a stone. What I mean is why don't we just ignore them, they shoot off a rocket that fails miserably we act like nothing happened. Until they pull something off that works North Korea is dead to me, you hear me? DEAD!)
  
• Seth Rogan can't act. He can giggle, Mumble thoughts to himself and shout about his feelings to others. It must be the hair. (Thanks to Bill Simmons and his explanation that all Romantic Comedies follow the same basic plot line [funny parts - the romantic problem - the dramatic reunion - less funny parts] Zach and Miri Make a Porno was the first of many romantic comedies that I will not be able to enjoy.)
  
• New personal record 48.6 MPG. (I deliberately stayed below 15 MPH for the last part of my ride back to the lot just so the gas motor would not engage. Why? I have not idea)
  
• "Family Size" Cheez-It box? More like "Kevin Size" Cheez-It Box.
• Who when Coke is on sale for 10 for $10 actually buys 10? This guy.
• God do I love All Girl Swedish Rock bands. Jens has been replaced in the "will travel anywhere to see perform" category by Sahara Hotnights
• If Panda's are too stupid to procreate why are we trying to save them? Charles Darwin is rolling over in his grave right now. ("Cute & Cuddly" is not a valid argument)
  
• If action movies have taught me anything it is not to press the red button. Then why did I just press the red button on my security system?
• Where is my neighbor going at 5 AM? Better question: Why am I awake? (Our neighbor is an enigma, it is known that she owns both a red jacket and a lighter green jackeyt, she comes and goes at all hours of the day and night, occasionally has small children over, and cooks heavily spice laden food. All this is known from looking through the peep hole.)
  
• You can't record a hip-hop song, put guitar and drums to it and then call it Rock. I'm looking at you Lil Wayne.
• I shave because I have to, not because I want to.
  
• After this Sunday I see no reason why I should shave. This could be bad. (Katy has since informed me that such a policy shift towards shaving would be detrimental to my administration on other fronts.)
  
• Climate Change Prof: People who buy Hybrids hardly ever recoup the premium they paid for them in the first place.
• Climate Change Prof: The benefits of installing solar panels in your home is negligible if not a negative.
• My climate change professor = Debbie Downer
• Green Peace guy, I get it u want my $ to stop baby seal clubbing. What u don't know is that that $ went towards the purchase of a seal club.
• Dear NBA Executives, I have since declared myself eligible for the NBA draft. (Why can't I opt out of the rest of my college career and get paid millions of dollars to play basketball. Yes I am a terrible basketball player but the point is I have paid, or will pay, for my education and I will not be awarded a multi-million dollar contract. Not fair, and don't give me that life is not fair bullshit because I know it isn't but I still can grippe about it on the internet.)
  
• Tostitos "Now with 20% more!" Yeah, 5% more chips and 15% more air.
• Kevin will learn the piano this summer. Crisis averted. (You can thank Ben Folds)
  
• Apparently as a blogger I don't have to backup my claims factual evidence. So all those justifications for the invasion of Canada were 4 not.
• "with" is the key word missing from that last tweet. You figure out where it goes
• Screen-Dropping: (v) The act of observing the computer activity of an individual in front of you. "I was screen-dropping her buying shoes"
• Using a big word in a sentence & then explaining that word in the same breath makes you a condescending asshole. "the nadir, the bottom...."
• 24 hour news networks make for gutless, boring, fake political candidates and makes their mistakes 6 years down the road even more shocking.
• Tweet Deck, if you don't have it I suggest you get it. tweetdeck.com
• I wish I loved life as much as the keyboardist from The Faint does. (Let's just say his chief concern for the night was not playing the keyboard)
  
• Climate change Prof: "Your fridge will be connected to the Internet and will be controlled by the power company server" Oh the possibilities
• Climate Change Prof: "Driving on your cell phone, even with a hands free device. = Driving drunk"
• North Korea has a Parliament? Why?
• New Rule: You can't complain about me not reffing a game seriously when you don't take it serious enough to show up to your games.

Get your instant grumblings here.

Some Things

Just a few quick things;

1. I am back from Egypt
2. I put a new set of links up on the left side of the blog title "Upcoming Shows" which are the next bands/musicians I will be seeing. Seeing as how I always have show to go to I figured it would be something interesting to put up there. The name will probably change in the next couple of days, I just can not think of anything right now.
3. I'll write something about Egypt in the coming days, I just have a lot of work hours scheduled and a bunch of school work to catch up on so just bear with me.

Update

Can't believe I forgot this one, was the whole reason I was writing this post in the first place: Because I don't post everyday but the Little Grumblings are released nightly that means occasionally you get back to back posts of Little Grumblings. So to remedy this I have decided to combine any Little Grumblings posts that end up going back to back (2 or more in a row). If you use RSS I apologize that you get so many posts from me, I apologize even more if you have my RSS and follow me on Twitter. Sorry.

Tweets Galore

I added a new service to the blog that should be hitting all of you in roughly two hours time and should hit you every night at midnight for the foreseeable future. If you don't like it I'm sorry. And if you follow me on Twitter already then you can have a second dose of my blathering at no extra cost to you, the reader!

Weekends

For the foreseeable future I think I may take weekends off on the blog. That means no features will be posted on weekends (It's Easy being Green, music, top five, etc), though I may break the silence with a random thought or two. Good day!

Bigger is Better

As you can undoubtedly tell by visiting the blog, a column has been added on the left and the blogging area has increased in size as well. Also my last five tweets have been added. Let me know if you are having problems viewing the blog by either emailing me or just leaving a comment on this post.

And as always if you put your email in the little box up in the corner and hit submit you will be emailed each days posts in news letter format every night.

New Banner Up

For those of you who read via the RSS. And it is not supposed to make any mathematical sense so don't even try to complain about it.

Where are we going and how do I get off this thing?

As many of you (or few) have noticed there really is no direction to this blog anymore. It started off as a way to vent about frustrations as a bottom feeder of the corporate, governmental, and scholarly fields that I find myself in, which it still is. But as of late it has taken many goofy and, one might even call, entertaining turns. I apologize if you if you came to this blog to find serious discussions about everyday problems. I have tried that before and sadly I come off like every other blow hard out there and to tell you the truth there isn't much fun in being a whiny bitch. What you have gotten instead is me (Hooray!) the goofy, socially awkward and sarcastic 22 year old (oh so young!) who has a slight obsession with Coke.

As far as the future of the blog goes, expect plenty of goofy Kevin things (imagine me dancing in your minds eye, it's OK you can laugh out loud) and maybe a serious thought or two mixed in.

Your New Years Resolution!

I know this comes a week late but the Church of Latter Day Underlings observes the New Year on January 8th not 1st.

Yes I have the audacity to tell you what your New Years Resolution should be. And what is it pray-tell? Well it's more of a task I ask of you, but what I would like you to do is get one friend (365 days, one person!) to start reading this blog by years end. That's it. I will ask nothing else of you this year (I lie). At this rate by years end we could have 8 readers! Imagine that by the end of 2010 we could have 16! Oh the possibilities! And for good measure another!

And while we are on the subject Grumbling of an Underling makes the perfect present! It's free and with the rate that posts come in it is the gift that keeps on giving (if by giving you mean sarcastic and snide remarks then yes it gives plenty)!

And for a limited time at 50% off (0 x .5 still equals 0 my friends) I, The Underling will give them a personalized email at your request! Just send over the order and I will give them a gift to remember!

No Excuses!

You no longer have any excuses to miss a single post if you don't look at Facebook every day, have an RSS feeder, check Twitter or don't want to manually check everyday! Now you can have it emailed to you! Just type your email address in the box in the corner that says "Enter Your Email Address" and hit "Subscribe" and every email will be sent to your mailbox! It's that simple! And this exclamation point is the last one!

Irony: Anyone who saw this most likely used an RSS feeder or saw it on Facebook or Twitter.

New RSS Feed

For all of you who use an RSS reader to access this site I am putting in a new RSS link later today, courtesy of FeedBurner.

Add this to your reader http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IEgQ

Quick Note

I changed the feed to only show the first 250 characters. So all of you who use a rss reader will have to access the actual site to read the whole post. Sorry, I hate when blogs do this as well but now I know why they do it.

In my case the reasons are two

1. I want everyone who reads to trigger the tracker so I get some cool stats (Yeah I'm a Geek).
2. I will be adding some features and stuff to the sidebar in the future and if you just use the reade you won't be able to see it.

If you really don't like coming to the site and just want it to be delivered to you then send me an email and I will personally email each post to you everytime I post something.

Edit: For now I changed it back because it isn't working like I thought it would. Once I get the kinks out I will set it to the way I want. Consider yourselves lucky.