Uncle Walter's Rants

A happy happenstance - Professor Walter gets noticed

I am happy to announce that the Professor got a favorable nod on http://tumblr.markwyner.com/ who was kind enough to note.

"If you enjoy history and don’t know about Professor Walter, you should. He’s a very unique individual who shares brief traces about history on his website. He posts about french fries, psychedelic sodas, and medieval robots. It’s all good stuff."

Good work Professor!  Keep it up!

-Uncle Walter

As always Professor Walter's latest posts can ber found at http://www.professorwalter.com

 

"My god," He thinks. "She is beautiful."

That line made The Wife laugh tonight.  Now, you may ask how could this make her laugh?  Well, in my sordid past, I was in the public speaking team in high school.  I was pretty bad at it, but the skills never left and have only gotten better.  One specific way they have improved is in my ability to do, well, a little bit of voice acting, I suppose.  So when The Wife asked me to read a portion of a romance novel from a website, I couldn't resist creating voices for all the characters, going all out with it.  Each voice developed through the story, and the man's didn't click until I saw that line. Instantly I knew that a 70% Charlton Heston was called for.  So, our female character opens her front door to see her boss, who has come over to help her with some work.  He looks at her and thinks to himself:

"My god, She is beautiful."

Now, imagine Charlton Heston saying that line, kind of chewing on the words, "My god."  That one line almost had her hit the floor, and really made me think.  Should I make a book on tape?  Well, MP3, rather?  I think I actually found something that I enjoy and may be good at, but still adds to the Uncle Walter empire.  Of course the whole thing is pretty funny to listen to as well, and it would manage to get me to read a romance novel.  Let me know what you think.

-UW

What the world needs now...is a good critic

Once upon a time I started this little blog because of one thing, the movie Ultra Violet.  As a fan of bad movies I hoped that this would provide some enjoyment.  The reviews were mixed, but they never match my tastes.  Either the movie is great or stinks by them, but they never worked for me.  Then I saw this poorly assembled piece of garbage and I realized that someone should have warned me.  No one told me really how bad it was, no one prepared me, no one told me taking a bathroom break and missing some would have made it a better movie.  I felt it was my duty to be that person and warn people about bad films (and approve of good ones).  Yet, somehow in the process of the rants blog other things came up and it evolved from my23cents.com (movie reviews) to Uncle Walter's Rants (lots 'o' ranty things).

This weekend I took the boy and girl to see How to Train Your Dragon.  It was a fun adventure that was action packed and with a happy ending .  It is one of those movies that I think just about everyone would enjoy.  Yet the news stated it was doing poorly in the box office.  It deserves props.  I feel that old desire brewing again to be a movie critic, just on the side.  Should I start up My23Cents as a movie review site again, as it was in the beginning?

-UW

Time to break it down again

Wow, the romance stuff has begun to take off.  Hits are increasing, which is good.  I will be adding a little advertising to the covers blog this weekend to help that site pay for itself.  Professor Walter is still finding his footing, but slowly growing.  I will break Prof off the traditional Uncle Walter set and he will get his own twitter account and such.  Different markets and all.  I will also re-do the feedburner setups so they come from Uncle Walter addresses.  I have a few new blog ideas that I may try out soon, so keep an eye out.  Let me know what you think about them.  One idea I have is to take my old advertisements and do them similar to the cover blog, another has reviews of the books as it's own site (already in place by the wife but not heavily promoted).  I don't know more stuff in my head somewhere, I will flesh it out soon.  If you have any ideas let me know.

-Uncle Walter

Car Seats and Baby Stuff - Too Dangerous to Be in Use

So, I have been visiting thrift shops and garage sales looking for little tibits of good stuff to sell on eBay and Craigslist to help fund this little blog empire I have built up.  Recently I have been coming across alot of good kids and baby stuff, and it is selling well which is nice, but there is some real frustration that has come out of it as well.  Primarily this centers on expired, dangerous car seats.  I see people scooping up these things that are well past their usable point and tossing their kids into them!  What is wrong with these people?  Don't they know they are risking their kids lives? I think some don't know and some do, but don't believe that there is really a danger.  After all one of my coworkers used to have his wife take the kids out of the car seat when they were on the highway because, "If we have an accident, we're all dead anyway".

I know I have little power there.  People are reluctant to listen, and "fathers" don't really know what's best for kids.  If I say the wife says so, then she is just something like a nursing Nazi, and over protective and the mother of the kids knows what's best.  How do I know this?  I have tried in the past, without any luck.  So what can I do to help?  Well, Uncle Walter doesn't like the thought of kids splattered on the side of the road so I am combining my eBay business into something can help with that.  I am buying and destroying bad car seats.

They aren't too expensive, and I can sell the covers to people who have good seats.  Usually I can recoup the cost, and I help someone out, but more importantly there is potentially one less dead child in the world when I smash an out of date car seat.  I would like to think that does some good.

If you need kid or baby stuff support this effort and check out my eBay auctions at http://shop.ebay.com:80/unclewalter23/m.html?_dmd=1&_ipg=50&_sop=12&_rdc=1

Thanks.

-Uncle Walter

Hey out there! Check out www.rottenromance.com!

Ok, time for a little shameless self-promotion! 

So, anyway The Wife was talking about problems with people remembering romance.unclewaltersrant.com.  Well, I had to agree.  That was a bit tough, especially when you a run into someone at random and have to throw out a url at them.  Well, after much deliberation (I was personally thinking something like www.unclewaterrocks.com) we settled on www.rottenromance.com.  So I hacked together a little landing page, and soon everything can be linked to from there.  Take a look and send me a few suggestions.  Oh, and don't worry.  covers.unclewatersrants.com and romance.unclewaltersrants.com will keep working.  For my two or so readers, www.unclewaltersrants.com will stay right where it is.

-Uncle Walter

PS: Today is my anniversary to The Wife!

What new domain should I get for the covers and quotes blogs???

Well, I hope that everyone has been enjoying the quotes blog and the cover blogs.  They started out as something for fun, and have really grown quite a bit.  Now we aren't as big as failblog.org or some of the others, but we are growing.  It is time for us to take the next step with these two and pick domain names.  So covers.unclewaltersrants.com and romance.unclewaltersrants.com will get their own unique easy to remember names!  Yay!  Smile, It's a good thing.  The old links will still work though.  But there is a problem.  What names should we get?  We could go with www.unclewaltersromancequotes.com but that seems really long.  So I am soliciting suggestions from the adoring public,for new names.  Feel free to post suggestions here or e-mail them to me at [email protected].  Thanks!

-Uncle Walter

Let the selling begin!

So, it begins.  I have started up some eBay selling to help fund some new blog endeavors, and work toward some UW t-shirts.  Not too much up there yet, but in time I will have lots of stuff, including some of the romance novels we have finished with.  I can even autograph them if you would like :)

Any way if you want any of my stuff check out my eBay stuff by looking for the seller unclewalter23

Thanks!

-Uncle Walter

I see a new blog on the horizon, I feel there's trouble on the way

So Uncle Walter's Rants has a new blog off-shoot.  Once again I tested the blog idea out here first, and the response was strong enough to warrant a new blog.  So as my last few posts have revealed I am a bit of a history nut, especially in random facts that most people don't know.  Those who know me in person are aware of this, but those out there in der interwebz land may not.  So I have decided to create a new blog that will show the strange and interesting historical facts that I have in my head on a, mostly, daily basis.  I have copied the last history posts to the new blog as some starter content. 

Now, I know that www.unclewatersrants.com and romance.unclewaltersrants.com and covers.unclewaltersrants.com would make you think that I would just do something like history.unclewaltersrants.com.  Well, I decided that since my core blog has some, well, fluff type stuff I would make a break from the standard format and create a new URL and everything. 

So be sure to check out the new history blog and let me know if you like it.  The URL is www.professorwalter.com, and no I am not really a professor, but I do play one on the internet ;)

-Uncle Walter

Uncle Walter has spawned a new blog... About bad romance novel quotes

For my three or so regular readers out there I believe that my random rants are good and enjoyable, but I know, deep in my heart, that there are others who want something more consistent and funny.  I see my hits every day and I know that funny gets the bulk so I have decided to "sell out" and pander to the masses with my new blog.  Fortunately I have found something insanely funny that hasn't been done nearly enough.  Bad romance novel quotes.  Yes, I know it sounds weak, but you have to read some of the dribble that flows from the fingertips of authors who have produced tons of books with consistent and not so consistent quality.  Expect to read bits about vulvas, quivering parts, and engorged members.  Come to think of it you may not want the kids reading this one :)

-Uncle Walter

http://romance.unclewaltersrants.com