Dave's Fiction Warehouse

  T he odds of artificial intelligence someday wiping out humanity are estimated at somewhere between 5 and 90 percent, depending on which expert you ask.   Bummer. But the bigger issue is, how will this affect me and my blog?  I’m feeling pretty good about it. See, while AI floods the Internet with synthetic shit – Taylor Swift nudes, pro-Trump black folk, that strange photo of Duchess Kate – I figure the market for artisan, handcrafted shit can only get better.  Two words: Supply and demand. Well, that’s three words, but the point is, human-generated content is hard to find. If you’ve recently checked Facebook reels, or your news feed, or Amazon, or TikTok or YouTube, you know what I mean. Your finite attention span is being drowned by an infinite tsunami of fakery. There’s so much of it that it’s rendering search engines useless. It’s going to get worse. You really need to quit falling for that stuff. One thing about the Warehouse: everything here is certifie...

T o celebrate President’s Day 2024, I decided to forgo the usual fireworks, gift-giving and ceremonial dances. Instead I started moving all the posts on this 17-year-old blog to one big text file on Google drive. I’m thinking maybe I’ll get them printed at some point.  It’s every bit as tedious as it sounds. By now the blog has almost 900 posts; I’m having to copy and paste each one. As I go through them, starting with the first one from June 2007, I’ve noticed a few things.  First, I used to post almost every day. I posted more in the first three years than in the following eleven.  I started out focusing on crime fiction and writing, but then gradually let things devolve into the desultory – TV shows now long defunct, movies and politics and pop culture. A long road trip out west. A death in the family. And, starting in 2015 or so, a certain malignant clown who continues to bedevil us to this day.   Second, I’ve been kind of repetitious. The preceding paragrap...

W here was I? Oh yeah: Bitching about the beggars of Missoula. Seems like a long time ago. But then, I guess it was. More than two months now. For me, it’s a personal best for not blogging. Not sure what’s happened to my occasional urge to write here. I think it has something to do with running out of ideas. Every time I consider a topic, I eventually remember that I wrote something just like it earlier. Kind of like this post. No excuse really, considering all the amazing stuff that’s happened since July. For instance … well, just a whole lot of things. What does it say about me that only things that spring immediately to mind are a few more mass shootings and Miley Cyrus tragically losing control of her tongue? Whoa. That tongue thing: It’s a silent disease that afflicts too many nymphets. Won’t you please help? We can’t do anything about mass shootings, but surely the nation that put men on the moon can sort out Miley’s tongue. Not much else to report. About all I’ve been doing is w...

I t's tax time here at the Warehouse, so we've been busy pulling together records for the accountant. Basically, it looks like gross income will again be zero for the year, resulting in a net income of, let's see ... also zero. We do have another year of depreciation on the coffee maker and the Herman Miller Aeron chair we bought in more prosperous times, but we suppose the lack of income renders that moot. Readership remains at about 30 hits a day, although closer analysis reveals 20 of those hits to be ourselves, checking to see if there are any comments. Comments, which we've been accepting in lieu of cash, have declined slightly from minimal to statistically insignificant. But that's probably because we're no longer juicing the numbers by replying to our own posts. So it is the opinion of the board that the Warehouse is weathering the economic meltdown pretty well. Our Twitter initiative has not performed to expectations, producing even fewer comments than ...

Seems like only yesterday that blogging was considered hip and cool and thoroughly modern, not to mention a force that would transform the world and probably lead to many lucrative offers. In fact, it was only yesterday. Today, I read in Wired , it's become quaint, as dated as shouting into a mobile phone the size of a refrigerator, the way Michael Douglas did in the movie Wall Street . As Wired 's Paul Boutin explains , blogging peaked in 2004 -- about three years before I got into it. Now it's all Twitter and Flickr and Facebook and YouTube. Video clips and crappy cell-phone photos speak louder than words, and 140 characters is all the text anybody has time to peruse. Nobody cares to read a few deft paragraphs; it's about phrases , baby, and the shorter the better. Nobody cares about your thoughts; it's about your impulses. What you feel right this minute. I got a kick out of this quote from longtime blogger Robert Scoble: "I keep my blog mostly for long-fo...

I've decided to changed the focus of the blog. Which is to say, I've decided that the whole focus thing is overrated. The crime-fiction theme went well when I was reading a lot of crime fiction, but now that I'm not, whole fortnights go by when I can't think of anything pertinent to say. Clearly, this cannot continue. Henceforth I'll be writing about whatever I feel like: Politics, the economy, those stupid Mac commercials, Paula Abdul. You name it. And yeah, if I pick up a book worth talking about, I'll hold forth on that too. I've got tepid opinions on most everything, so why hold back? Last time I checked, blogger.com was not charging by the word. For those of you have purchased lifetime subscriptions, drop me an e-mail and I'll immediately refund your money, at least that portion I've not blown on whores and whiskey. Ha ha. Look, it's not like anybody's reading this anyway. For me, the blog started out as just a way to write something eve...

This is a rough description of my thinking over the last couple of weeks. Having reached stage seven already, it may be time to regroup. Not sure what I was thinking, devoting a blog to crime fiction when there are so many excellent ones already out there. Perhaps I'll change the focus to late-50s quiz shows... 1. I'll just see how it works. You figure everybody else is blogging, so why not give it a try? There's always a chance it could be more fun than watching "Deal or No Deal." 2. Look, I'm writing! You read and reread your published posts and experience a thrill akin to seeing your name on a best-selling novel. This is easier than you thought. And just think: every day your erudite ruminations are out there for all the world to see. 3. Here's the link. You realize that your thoughts are not only as valid as anyone else's, they're probably quite a bit more so, given your expertise and innate understanding of the topic. So you start spreading ...