We’re Number 3,003,712 Baby!

Woohoo! I cracked the top 4 million on Amazon!

Seriously though, thank you to all of you who have read my book and given me very helpful feedback. It’s already paid dividends with the second book, which incidentally is about at the quarter-mile post. This one is taking longer, because it’s a more involved story that requires a great deal of historical research. I’ll give you updates along the way.

Also, stay tuned to this space, because in the very near future, I will be participating in something quite new to the publishing industry: an online book-signing! It’s a clever idea that I predict will become more and more popular. I will be part of a panel with two or three other authors talking about their books. Invitees to the signing will be able to listen and ask questions. In addition, you’ll receive an author-signed Bookstub redeemable for the download of an e-book! I’ll make an announcement as soon as the date is settled.

I want to give a special shout-out to Jack for the Amazon review! You realize you’re enabling me to be a shiftless writer, don’t you? Thanks Big Brother, really!

An Interview with Mike Nelson

I’m a huge MST3K fan and enjoy amateur riffing in my living room. Still I can’t touch the originals! When it went off the air, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy  continued this “art form” with RiffTrax.

Mike was the head writer for MST3K and still makes his living writing. Recently I came across this interview with him by Flightpath. Go read the whole thing, but I wanted to excerpt this quote especially:

Flightpath: How do you compare writing for RiffTrax, which is released quickly and online – people can get it instantly – with writing for other mediums you’ve worked in, like TV and print?

Mike Nelson: I just consider the writing of RiffTrax a hard slog at times, because you’re concentrating so much that the amount of time that it takes would probably surprise people, and probably be pretty daunting to most writers. But once you get the efficiencies of it, and you understand what you’re doing – and obviously we’ve done this a lot – there’s something very nice about relaxing into that. It’s like, some people just like doing manual labor to think. This is kind of the opposite. It gets you away from all of the other writing. You know, writing is hard, and I always try to avoid it. Even though I do it for a living, and I’m constantly writing.

When I hear people say, “Oh, when I just have some downtime, I just love to do some writing,” I’m like, “Really? Are you insane? It’s really, really hard!” But there is an element of relaxation to doing it for RiffTrax, where you know what you have ahead of you and it looks like a lot of work. It’s kind of like when I was a kid, I used to like when my dad would to tell me to move a big stack of wood. It was just like, “Well, you know, you just have to do it.” And there’s something about that, of just having this large task ahead of you, and just putting your head down and doing it.

Boy howdy! Well, back to the novel…but first I think I’ll mow the lawn.

Uh, Thanks?

Was cleaning out the spam trap. You’d be amazed at all the gunk that collects down there–Gives me the willies!

Anyhoo, while poking around, flashlight in one hand and a sharp stick in the other, I came across this:

I do not know what it be, but I do not want to lose you. Because, you treat the people I really ah, is the first time, so caring about. I just want to Hello, my dear friend, and I Can selfish, I do not want a distant blessing for you, I think we have Ke Yi Xiang Yi Qian did, but Huoxu, that it is a luxury.

I think it’s a bad idea to write, even spam, with a Chinese-to-English dictionary.

 

An Open Letter to the Johnson & Johnson Company

Dear Sirs:

What evil, heartless, mindless, sadistic bastard at your company is responsible for the design of the Band-Aid®? I’m sorry if that was a little harsh. Let me try again. Did it ever occur to you imbeciles, that when you’re bleeding like you just walked off the set of a Quentin Tarantino movie, it’s next to impossible to apply a @#$%& Band-Aid to the wound!

Please understand gentlemen that I do not write to carp and whine, but rather to dialog with you in a spirit of constructive criticism; to provide useful feedback from consumer to manufacturer. Therefore, in that same spirit, let me enumerate all the ways your product sucks: First, we have the design of the miserable, little paper wrapper that only a neurosurgeon with microscopic instruments could successfully open, but only with much difficulty. Someone who, with their one good hand, is grappling with a towel in order to stem the flow of blood on the wounded hand, cannot easily grasp the teeny, tiny little flaps of paper you supply to pull the package apart. I’m sorry, I must apologize again: did I say, “Cannot easily?” I meant, “Can’t at all you stupid jerks!”

Next, we have the waxy, white strips of paper that keep the adhesive from sticking to the paper package. Congratulations gentlemen, this is the one facet of your product that works as designed! The adhesive does not stick to the paper wrapper. It will only stick to itself, or to the finger that isn’t gushing blood, or to the towel, your pant leg, the dog. What it also doesn’t stick to is the wounded finger. Blood completely foils the adhesive properties of this clever product, thereby necessitating another fruitless struggle to open yet another bandage.

Now, if by some miracle you survive the drop in blood pressure long enough to fumble this most basic of ligatures onto your hemorrhaging extremity, you’re then faced with having to apply six or seven more because, lastly, the sterile pad which is supposed to dress the wound is about as absorbent as glass. But this is all nitpicking. At least there will be a bloody pile of ripped and mangled Band-Aid wrappers lying on the floor for you to land on as you collapse in shock from blood loss.

In fairness, I confess that it may be possible that I have not fully divined the nature of your business model. It could be that my comments are way off base. I naturally assumed you were engaged in the manufacture and marketing of health products. It just occurred to me that your plan is really to slowly kill off the majority of mankind by supplying inferior first-aid products thereby leaving the remaining cowed population so addled and debilitated that they actually prefer Splenda® to sugar. Hmmm…in that case, I must say you’re succeeding brilliantly!

Watch Me Commit Professional Suicide

I tried real hard to just shut up and look away, but I can’t—some of you will not be surprised. I am about to tick off a whole bunch of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow Roman Catholics.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal,

…a group of fellow Catholics from his home state of Wisconsin, including some Franciscan Friars are calling for the vice presidential hopeful’s “conversion.” The group launched a website, PrayforPaulsChangeofHeart.org, that asks visitors to

“Please pray for Paul Ryan, a devout Catholic, to have a change of heart on the federal budget.” It includes a special Rosary prayer to St. Paul, “the great convert,” to bring about a transformation in the anti-deficit Republican.

For the record, I am a parishioner of SS Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Naperville, Illinois, a Benedictine Oblate, and a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, so you could say I am also a practicing Roman Catholic. With all due respect to my brothers and sisters in Christ, you are dead wrong.

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