Review: Deals with The Universe.

Hello hello, Warrior here! I recently applied for a job. Like a real deal job.

Actually it kind of fell into my lap. A friend of mine happened to work for a very large and very important Consulting firm. He knew that I am an getting my degree in the Environmental Sciences. So one day I was complaining about not having a (high paying) job and he says "Why don't you apply to (Consulting Firm Name) I will give you an internal referral."

Now for those of you who don't know how this works, lots of corporations have a system in place that allows current employees to endorse new applicants to the HR department. This is called an internal referral. Having an internal referral does not guarantee the applicant will get a job but they do get selected preferentially if it comes down to them and somebody without a referral.

The Warrior was pretty excited about the opportunity. Many of you that know me know that I am a pretty big skeptic. I don't believe in magic, the Lock Ness Monster, or Sarah Jessica Parker. That being said, sometimes I do what I call "Making a Deal with The Universe." For example: I am really bad about staying alert on long car trips. Once when driving between Clemson and NoVa (that's what the cool kids call Northern Virginia... I like it!) I made a deal with The Universe. "Universe" I said, "If you keep me alert, and out from under tractor trailer trucks, I will listen to nothing but heavy metal, all the way down to Clemson and all the way back." And so I did. I listened to CD after CD of face melting riffs, blistering drums, and brutal vocals. Well I stayed awake on that trip, and I made it safely to Clemson and back and here I am today Writing a silly blog that has been re-purposed to talk about basically what ever I want it to. Today I will not be reviewing a book. Instead I will review the latest deal I made with The Universe.

Review: Failure Bowls, Chicken Broth, And Andre Pink.

At first I was pretty unsure of my ability to land a real deal environmental consulting job. But then, in late December I got a phone call from (Consulting Firm Name). They were calling me in for an interview. Needless to say I spent the rest of the day doing the robot. After 24 solid hours of roboting, I got scared. What if I get called into the interview and then screw it up somehow, or just don't interview as well as the other people that are getting interviewed. That's when I made the first part of The Deal. "Universe," I said "If I get this job, I will eat a Jimmy Dean Failure Bowl." For those of you not familiar with the Jimmy Dean Failure Bowl, it is a disgusting mixture of every single breakfast food on the planet, blended into a near liquid form and slurped out of a bowl.

It looks like this:


I should take this time to point out that most of my "Deals with The Universe" operate under the assumption that The Universe enjoys watching humans do eccentric or disgusting things. The Universe also enjoys heavy metal.

After the the first round of interviews I felt really good about the job, but they hadn't officially offered it to me yet. Then I got a second call. "Hey [Warrior]," said (Consulting Firm Name) "We liked you, but we are still considering other people too, and we want to make sure that you know how to eat food without looking like a stupid idiot, hows about you meet us at the office and we do a second round of interviews over a fancy lunch at (Restaurant Close to Consulting Firm Name)." I was psyched but understandable insecure. "Crap," I thought, I still didn't have the job. Well time to up the ante Universe. I made a second deal. If I got the real deal consulting job I would drink two cups of chicken broth strait. I selected my favorite sipping broth.

It looks like this:

The second round of interviews went well, I got to eat some free butternut squash ravioli.

After a few weeks of not hearing anything from (Consulting Firm Name) I got a little worried again. I called HR and attempted to follow up. HR hadn't heard anything. They said that they would contact me again in 2 business days.

Three business days later I get an emails saying I didn't get the job. I emailed the person who had interviewed me, thanking them for my time and wishing them the best of luck with their new hire. Another day passes and I get an Email back saying "Hold everything [Warrior] HR is crazy. They were talking about another job that you didn't get and didn't even know you were applying for." After another day of waiting I got the call. I got the job. I would start March the second, but before I started work I knew I had to make good on my end of The Deal. The Universe got me a job, so I owed it a little horrible food related entertainment.

Now with the back story out of the way, on to the actual reviews.

Jimmy Dean Failure Bowls:

Jimmy Dean makes a product known as the "Breakfast Bowl." Me and the Ladywarrior have always mocked them for their ridiculous nature, naming them Failure Bowls after a Patton Oswald skit about a similar product. The Failure Bowl combines eggs, cheese, bacon and potato into a single bowl friendly mush. It's kind of like the most disappointing omelet you have ever had. It is prepared in the microwave so that you get that weird effect where parts of it are over 9000 degrees and parts of it are still frozen. Also the amount of grease in a Failure Bowl is approximately equal to the amount of grease needed to lubricate a jet engine. Still the combination of eggs, cheese bacon and potatoes is a crowd pleaser. It's not that it necessarily tasted that bad. its just that its a lazy and unnecessary product. Why can't you eat your eggs, cheese bacon and potatoes separately in the form of eggs, bacon and home fries\hash browns. This is a combo that is available at every single restaurant that serves breakfast on the face of the entire planet. This is how a normal person with some dignity eats these foods.

Two Cups of Swanson Chicken Broth:

Hot Chicken Broth is actually quite delicious. It is kind of like chicken noodle soup without all those pesky chickens and noodles. if it did not contain roughly 170% of your daily sodium intake for the day I would drink it more often.

Finally how do you celebrate getting a job with (Consulting Firm Name)? Well I don't know how you celebrate special occasions, but me and the Ladywarrior drink champagne. No, not real champagne. We drink Andre Pink Champagne.

Andre Pink Champagne



It's the only alcoholic beverage that is the exact same color as Barbies convertible. It tastes like sprite with booze in it. It is amazing, it comes in a resealable bottle (no corks here!), and its available for approximately 5 dollars a bottle. I highly recommend Andre Pink Champagne. It gets my highest review yet, 4.5 out of 5 Pterodactyls.

You'll be sayin' wow every time.

Since the dawn of time, mankind has had to endure the moist indignity of spilled soda. No longer my friend, today is the day of the Shamwow. On the 8 day God and the Germans created the Shamwow and God saw that it was good. Many of you are familiar with the Shamwow from its commercials, in which a headset wearing huckster makes outrageous claims about the absorbent nature of this miracle chamois, in the soothing accent of a native Jersean. Today the Ladywarrior and I purchased a set of Shamwows and after rigorous testing I will now give you my honest review.

Review: ShamWow.


The Shamwow is a pretty good absorbent towel-like square of cloth. I am impressed with the size and quantity of Shamwows in one box. We purchased ours at Target and in the box we received 4 "mini" Shamwows and 4 large sized Shamwows. The mini Shamwows are pretty large, in fact they are at least as big as the shamwow seen in the commercials. This may be the only time in history that a product is actually bigger than the commercial presents it to be. In my opinion the commercial makes a few exaggerated claims about the absorbent nature of the Shamwow, specifically the demonstration featuring the cola underneath the carpet. The Shamwow is an excellent chamois but it does not have the near magical abilities displayed in that part of the infomercial. At this point I know what you are thinking, "Warrior, why would you endorse a product that lies in its commercials?" Well, let me tell you. The man in the commercials is named Vince Offer. I will not go into his history, (if you are interested you can read it here.) but basically Mr. Offer uses all of his profits from the Shamwow commercials to fight Scientology. That is something I support. As somebody who grew up in a cult like religion I totally support this New Jersey braggart and his fantastical towels. Also of interest is his commercial for a vegetable chopper named the Slapchop, whose commercial can be viewed here. I would like to mention that the same woman from the testimonial part of the Shamwow commercial is in the slapchop commercial. Man she most love Vince as much as I do.

A new direction for Coverjudge

Hey Guys, this is where I need your help. I have realized that my schedule of working part time, teaching, and being a full time student is not too conducive to my reading of a tremendous amount of silly books. Oh, I read a lot, but I don't think you guys want me to review scientific journal articles. So here is my new proposition to you, I will from now on publish a new article once a week, every Thursday, rain or shine, but it will not always be a new book review. It will however be a review of something. This is a review blog after all. (If you want to read about my daily life then you should read my other blog.) Tell me what you think of this new plan in my comments. I think it is a win win because you get to read more of my witty observations per month, but some of you might feel that it is divulging from the nature of my blog, and I understand that complaint.

-- The Warrior.

A sad day: Defeat for the Warrior.

I must claim defeat. Defeat at the hands of an enemy that I could never have seen coming. Never in all my experience have I encountered, nor even imagined, something so vile as Gatling Three: Border War existed.

When I started this blog I thought I was invincible. Certainly there is no power greater than to anonymously critique others' works through the internet without fear of rebuttal. Is this not what makes our message boards such a potent weapon in the war on artistic expression?

Well I have seen the error of my ways. I have seen that I am not untouchable. For I have seen the face of Jack Slade. An author so terrible that after 6 months of attempted reading I could only make it through about 50 pages of his book. I suspect that Jack Slade is not a real person at all. Perhaps Jack Slade is the name of a secret organization dedicated to the creation of literature so artfully awful that it could potentially be fatal. Perhaps Jack Slade is a complex western novel writing computer program, and someone accidentally left the "unreadable" option box checked. Whatever the truth may be, I give humanity this one word of advice: If alien beings ever make contact with us as a race, please, please, make sure to hide and or destroy all copies of Gatling Three: Border War, before the aliens find it, and know the darkness that lies in mankind's mad ability to create such horrific literature.

Behold the face of true madness:

Review: Decipher

Hello all, man it has been a long time since I updated, almost a month! Sorry for the delay but between Moving all of my stuff into a new apartment, getting married, moving all of Ladywarrior's stuff into the new apartment, getting internet hooked up, starting school, teaching three labs and working full time, well I think I can say with some authority that I've been a little busy. Oh did I mention that I got married. It's kind of a big deal, and I have to say that it was probably the funnest wedding ever. Everybody seemed to have a good time. Well any way on to the review for this month.

Decipher by Stel Pavlou

The Cover:


Ok Ok, I know that the cover of this novel is not very ridiculous... in fact its not ridiculous at all. I was turned on to this book by some of my Co-workers at the used bookstore. They were huge fans of the novel and said I should read it. They did give me a warning though, they said that while the information in the book was meticulously researched and the plot of the book was interesting and captivating the book itself, particularly the dialogue and some of the pacing was a little wacky. I will cover that more in the review of the content. As for the cover, it does actually relate to the content of the book as the glyph on the cover of the book plays a central role in the plot, which features an linguist trying to decipher an ancient language and divert a biblical scale disaster. The cover really isn't that crazy though and for reals... it doesn't fit in with this blog to well.

The Content:

As mentioned above the main plot of the novel Decipher is that some sort of global catastrophe destroyed the civilization of Atlantis about 12000 years ago, and they left us clues indicating that not only same disaster was about to befall us but also how to avert it. The only problem is that those clues are written in an ancient language that no living person can read. Enter the main character and hero of the story Dr. Richard Scott, a man so awesome that he has two first names. Scott is a historian and linguist whose specialty is ancient myths and legends. He also seems to be able to speak every language on earth (except Mandarin, as we find out at a time when speaking Mandarin would really help the progression of the plot.) I am not going to rag on the book too much because its fiction and all, but i could totally believe that Atlantis was destroyed 12000 years ago and that they left us crystals with clues about their destruction written all over them, but it seems a little unbelievable for one guy to speak Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Cantonese, and god knows how many more languages fluently. (Oh, he can also read all of the written languages associated with the previously mentioned list.) Ok, aside from Dr. Scott, there is also a rag tag team of scientists working to figure out the fantastical technologies left behind by the Atlanteans.

The plot of the novel was actually pretty interesting but the shear amount of data presented in the book made it feel like an almanac sometimes instead of a novel. It is clear that Mr. Pavlou did his research when he wrote this book. He even has a large bibliography citing his references at the end of the novel. I enjoyed the book but I kind of agree with my co-workers, the book could have been a little heavier on plot and character development and lighter on the science and comparative history and religion.

My final verdict is that the book was good, but not great. Definitely worth picking up if you can find it at a used bookstore for cheap, and I happen to know a used bookstore in the Northern Virginia area that will have a copy of it on the shelves later today.

Next Week's Title: Gatling 3 Boarder War

Review: Tower of Zanid

Hello all. This entry shall be necessarily brief. I have moved into my new apartment and do not currently have the internet, and as such am using an open (and unstable) wireless connection that one of the local businesses is so helpfully providing. Onward to the review!

The Tower of Zanid: by L. Sprague DeCamp

The Cover:


This is one of the books that My Special Lady bought for me last time she went to the used bookstore. I really like the combination of science fiction and fantasy elements in this cover. there's a green guy, and a dragon horse and a wizards tower looking thing, and what appears to be some sort of mobile pill box or metal tent in the distance. The picture on the cover of this book is supposed to be the climactic battle towards the end of the novel but.... that's just not what I imagined when I read it. For one thing, the battle took place 4 days march from the town of Zanid, where the eponymous tower is located. So why is it visible in this picture? Well I guess it's too much for me to ask that the cover art of a sci fi book from the 60's be accurate to the actual events in the book.

The Content:

The Tower of Zanid by L Sprague DeCamp is about 128 pages long. It should tell you something about the quality of the writing that it took me almost two weeks to read this book. in fact it took me about two weeks to read the first 50 pages and then I seriously contemplated giving up. Instead of giving up, I put on my rally helm and manned up and read the last 70 pages in one day. Plot of this book revolves around Anthony Fallon, the deposed king of the country of Zamba and his quest to make enough money to raise an army to return to Zamba. Note that it is not about him actually raising the army... just trying to make money. You know, there is a story about me trying to make money too. It's called 8 hours of my day every day of my life. I was unaware of how boring money can be until I read this book. That's right. This book was so terrible that I have renounced worldly possessions for fear that I too will be that boring.

I don't want to rag on the book completely so I will say this, the setting of the book, (the planet Krishna) is actually pretty interesting, and it is clear that the author put a lot of effort into creating a believable planet. I will not go into a great amount of detail but basically Krishna is an earthlike planet that has been discovered by humans, humans are free to visit it, but because of an technological embargo they are not allowed to bring any human devices that are technologically superior to devices of the natives. This explains why the dudes on the cover have spears and bows.

Over the course of the novel some Krishnans decide they want to gain respect from the humans (and destroy a neighboring country in the process) so the set about creating a new weapon in the basement of the tower of Zanid. Anthony Fallon is hired to sneak into the Tower and find out what they are making, if he is successful he will make a lot of money which is his goal... as well as every person's ever. He successfully infiltrates the tower... or at least its basement, and suprise, the top secret superweapon the Krishnans are developing is flintlock muskets. Anthony escapes the tower (basement) and promptly gets screwed out of his reward money. So not only is this a story where the characters only motivation is money, he never actually gets any money. I liked Krishna as a setting but I think maybe a better author should have handled it.

I would like to point out that reading terrible books like this is half the fun of writing a old scifi book cover review blarg though.

Next Week: Special not silly cover week,
Decipher (at the recommendation of my co workers)

Two weeks from now: Return to silly covers with special non sci fi book :
Gatling 3: Border War

Review: Fuzzies and Other People

Hello all, Dual book-wielding warrior sublcass rogue here. I am a few weeks into my job at the used book store and I have to say it's pretty awesome so far. I like the folks I work with and I have already bought a few books that will be perfect for the blarg. Sorry it took so long for me to update but the last few weeks have been pretty crazy. I visited SC to see my special lady a few weeks ago, and this week she is up here in VA looking for jobs and apartments for when she moves up permanently. She is also on the look out for books with ridiculous covers and has supplied some really awesome ones.

Anyway for the last couple weeks I have been reading Fuzzies and Other People. Here is what I thought of it.

Fuzzies and Other People: by H. Beam Piper

The Cover:


I found this book at the same time as I found The Devil Wives of Li Fong. When I first found them at the used bookstore in Clemson, all I saw was the spine of the book but I thought that they had such ridiculous titles that they had to be funny. I didn't really think about them again until after I started this bloog.

The cover of Fuzzies and Other People is a scene taken directly from the later portions of the book as some fuzzies flee a Forest fire. The text of the novel doesn't really describe fuzzies too well other than short humanoid, covered with golden hair and with five fingered hands. so I guess the artist did a pretty good job all in all. I do like the HUGE eyes that he gave them. And that knife the one is carrying looks pretty serious.

The tagline on the cover of Fuzzies is "The first publication of the legendary long lost third Fuzzies novel." Thats right. There are two more in this series apparently. And it doesn't stop there. There are two more novels set in the Fuzzies universe ( Probably called the Fuzzyverse by its fans) by authors other than H. Beam Piper. In the 60's and 70's Fuzzies was apparently a science fiction empire. Its really a shame they made those crappy Star Wars movies in the late seventies and not an awesome Fuzzies trilogy. (Can anybody else see the similarities between Ewoks and Fuzzies? I detect a little plagerism Mr Lucas.)

The Content:

Since Fuzzies and Other People is the third in a trilogy of novels it was a inaccessible to me especially because the author does absolutely no reintroductions. From the get go you are expected to know who everybody is, what they have been doing and why they have been doing it. He does give a very brief recap of who the fuzzies are and why people are helping them out so much. apparently in the previous two novels fuzzies were discovered and, there was a lot of debate over their sentience (their language registers in the ultrasonic so they seemed like silent animals to us humans you see). Eventually they were declared sentient and thus became citizens of the interplanetary alliance or some such nonsense. Later some kind of valuable gemstone was found on the planet making it economically important for the previously mentioned alliance. some bad people decided to kidnap some fuzzies and train them to rob a bank vault full of the gem stones but they got caught.

The third book starts off with the bad folks from the second book about to stand trial. apparently in the Fuzzyverse humans have created a device that can tell truth from lies with 100% accuracy, the only problem is that it can not be proven to work on fuzzies because well... nobody has ever witnessed a fuzzy lie. In fact humans even have a hard time explaining how to lie to fuzzies. Fuzzies aren't very smart you see. well the novel then takes kind of a detour and talks about a band of fuzzies that live far to the north of the human colony and are unaware of the human presence on the planet. One day they see some humans shooting some predatory birds that like to feed on fuzzies and their leader decided that they need to find the "Big Ones" that "Make Thunder Death" and make friends with them. Along the way to finding the humans some of the other fuzzies get impatient and start arguing with their leader about why they are traveling so much and if finding the humans is really such a good idea. The leader fuzzie comes up with a completely ingenious way to placate their worries. He invents lying, and tells them a series of lies to get them to follow him. This of course is a big deal when he gets to the human colony at the end of the book because he can lie while attached to the lie detecting machine and prove that the machine works for fuzzies and therefore the fuzzies that got kidnapped can testify in court.

I Think I would have enjoyed this novel a lot more if I had read the previous two, because I really didn't feel like I knew the human characters at all. The fuzzies were pretty cute though, especially in scenes where they try to curse like the humans they have observed. Also the author of this book seems to be obsessed with hunting, as that is what the fuzzies do for the majority of the to book. It seems that detailed lists of exaclty what fictional aliens killed and ate that day was really interesting in the 70's.

It should also be noted that I am pretty sure that this book was originally intended for children or young adults but there is a tremendous amount of drinking, smoking and violence in it. I found one passage particularly awesome. The author described one of the characters as dying by "allowing his body to stop one too many submachine gun bullets." I thought it was a funny way to describe it.

Over all I didn't hate Fuzzies and Other People but It really wasn't as much fun to read as some of the other books I have reviewed have been. The cover is still pretty funny to me when I look at in though.

Next Weeks Title:
Tower of Zanid