From the Mind of MandoRon

Definition:

A group of guys going somewhere together for the purpose of doing nothing.  Typically involves a few life-long friends, poker chips, a grill, and for some of the guys, consuming beer and scotch.

Use in a sentence:

The movie, “Wild Hogs” was about four friends hitting the road for a mancation.

Footnotes:

1. Since 1972, guys have been banned from bringing banjos with them.
2. Two interesting subsets of the mancation, are the hunting trip and the fishing trip.  Guns and/or fly rods are featured in these mancations.

First I want to clear things up… this isn’t a doomsday post.  (I don’t like those, in general.)

It’s just that I read two articles in the last two days that pointed to the same thing, but for different reasons.  It intrigued me.

Monday, I read this article “Cell Phone Mania Forces Scramble for More Airwaves” which discusses the bandwidth/spectrum issues that cell phone providers are facing.  As more cell phone users are needing more bandwidth for their cell phones, providers are running out of usable bandwidth.  One potential solution is to free up the spectrum used by broadcast television.

Then this morning, I read this article “Broadcaster’s Woes Could Spell Trouble for Free TV“.  Apparently the 4 networks are having financial woes because their historical business model has collapsed.  (I guess somebody moved their cheese…)  Faced with less ad revenues, some industry experts think that the networks will eventually give up broadcasting for free and switch solely to a pay-TV (cable, satellite, etc…) business model.

Both articles are worth reading.

Is the end of free TV in sight?  Maybe…  I hope it takes a while, though, because we cancelled our DirecTV service several years ago and I really like not having a cable or satellite bill.  (Sorry Denny.)

Interesting consequences for HD also.  We don’t have an HDTV yet, but I’m told that the local broadcasts are higher quality than what you get from Cox Cable, DirecTV, etc…

Thoughts?  Are we the only household in America that still relies on the free airwaves?

As you can tell by the title, what you are reading is not my original post.

Yesterday, I went on a bit of blogging tirade.  It all started when I received a bit of mail that touched on a nerve… stepped on one of my pet peeves, if you will.

So I wrote a rather scathing rebuke for all the world to read and agree with. 

Was I right? Probably.  Was airing it out in public the right thing to do?  No.

Luckily, I have a rule never to post anything while I’m ticked and my wife lectured me about why I shouldn’t.

1 Peter 3:8 says “Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.”  He was talking to me too.

So I’m spending a few days in the same hotel as the American Christian Fiction Writers National Conference.  Why?  Because my wife is attending, and the thought of goofing off in in Colorado for a few days really appealed to me.

Andrea and I have been talking a lot about the christian fiction industry lately.  There are a lot of similarities between the christian fiction and christian music industries. 

The key ingredients to marketable christian fiction seem to be: (1) gentle and uplifting, (2) set your novel in the past, (3) capitalize on what’s been done before, and (4) above all, follow the rules.  Romance appears to get you a nearly automatic book deal.  I’m dying to expound on this more, but I’m amazingly going to exercise restraint.  It’s perfect fodder for a Stuff Christians Like blog post.  Jon started to go there with this one, but didn’t dive fully into it.

Walking around the hotel with all of these novelists has got me thinking that I should try my hand at fiction.  So I’m going to write a short story for you today and publish it tomorrow.  The current plan is that it will fall into the Historical Vampire Fiction genre.

GO POKES!