Monthly Archives: October 2003

Cover Art

Amazon finally got around to replacing a horrible blue “temp art” cover for Book of the Dumb on its order page with the actual cover, which you’ll see below: This is something of a relief, as I was the opinion if the book came out and the temp cover was still there, no one would […]

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The Downside

Pamie went looking for her book at a bookstore and discovered that not only was it no longer on the shelves, but that the copies that had been on the shelves had been sent back to publisher. This is part of the life cycle of nearly every book, and Pamie’s a bit depressed about it. […]

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Subscriptions

Josh Marshall is asking for people to pay for him to go to New Hampshire for the primary, so he can write about it on his blog instead of having to approach his usual sources of income and write in non-blog fashion for them. I’m going to go ahead and kick in a few bucks […]

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Procedural Stuff

Some things: * My contract for By The Way was picked up again by AOL, so I’ll be doing that for a few more months at least. This is really good news. I’ve enjoyed doing it, and I’ve enjoyed watching the community of AOL Journalers coalesce and grow, and have some hand in that development. […]

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Industrious Publishers

I was on the Barnes & Noble site looking up some information on one of my books (and I love the fact that I can say “one of my books,” signifying that there is, indeed, more than one), when I noticed something interesting. Not only does the B&N site have a listing for Old Man’s […]

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The Genesis of a Literary Feud for the Ages

Who should drop by but Leland Gregory (or at the very least, someone claiming to be he), author of Hey Idiot! Chronicles of Human Stupidity, whose book, and the similarities in subject matter to Book of the Dumb therein, I noted yesterday. Noted he, in the comments: “I heard your book smells bad and mine […]

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Writing Stuff

Notes about the writing life and etc for this fine October Wednesday. * In one of those interesting coincidences, there’s another “stupid people doing stupid things” book out on the market right now, pretty much directly competing with mine: Hey, Idiot! Chronicles of Human Stupidity, by Leland Gregory. Mr. Gregory has mined this territory before: […]

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I For One Welcome Our New Preschool Overlords

Meet Mingette the Merciless, your new galactic empress: Mingette wishes her loyal subjects to know that she intends to begin a reign that will bring peace and prosperity and hardly any beheadings! Well, so long as everyone keeps in line. You know how it is. This costume is supposed to be a vampire costume, but […]

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Final Spam Tally

All right, I’m ending my spam count about an hour and 20 minutes early. But from 12:01am last monday morning to 10:38pm tonight, I have received exactly 3,503 pieces of spam mail. In contrast, in the same amount of time, I’ve received 80 non-spam e-mails, for a ratio of 43.8 pieces of spam for every […]

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Buying Music Online

I’ve been fiddling around with iTunes for Windows for the last couple of days, and not entirely surprisingly, I like it quite a bit; it’s well-designed both functionally and esthetically, downloading’s a snap (I downloaded a Sarah McLachlan EP and the Jeff Beck-Rod Stewart version of “People Get Ready”), and as a player it handles […]

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States’ Rights Stupidity

One of the reasons that it’s depressing to talk to Confederate sympathizers is that they have no understanding of just how profoundly idiotic they sound to anyone who does not bathe in the same feculent oil pit of ignorance that they do. One of my correspondents yesterday chose to attempt the “The US was bad, […]

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Speaking of Losers

Apparently some “Southern Heritage” site linked to one of my “The Confederates Were Losers” screeds, which is precipitating another wave of good ol’ boys to trot out their victimized wailings and send them to me in poorly spell-checked form. To forestall having the same argument over and over again, this would be a good time […]

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Fans of Losers

As is my capricious right, I’m going to go ahead and elevate this out of the comment thread for “Dear Cubs Fans.” It comes from “Bowler” who writes: This is the one point where I think I lose interest in your writing. I realize you write for a national audience, but let me tell you […]

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Hit It, Sadly Enough.

I mentioned earlier this week that I expected I would get more than 2000 pieces of spam this week, in which I’m tracking my spam rather than deleteing it outright. I just want to note that as of 8:05am (Eastern) friday morning, I am in the possession of 2190 pieces of spam, and still have […]

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Dear Red Sox Fans:

What I wrote yesterday largely applies to you, too, except, of course, the part about Steve Bartman, and that the Yankess are not a speck, a bug, a straw man propped up by the baseball gods. They are baseball gods’ favorite children. No, it’s not fair. You’re in the wrong universe for fair.

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Dear Cubs Fans:

I told you. You didn’t believe me. But you believe me now, don’t you. And, my God, it was perfect. Yes, yes, you’re in pain, I know. But, honestly, now. If you had to lose — and you did — isn’t it better this way? Not just to lose, but to lose big, to lose […]

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Yeah.

I, like all right-thinking men should, love Dahlia Lithwick. What’s more, I’ve loved her for a long time. I have no special reason for pointing this out at this particular moment, excepting that her comments regarding the word “no” as it relates to sexual activity are exactly right and stand in stark contrast to the […]

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Signal to Noise

I get a lot of spam, which is the result of having my e-mail address out there on the Internet. And I was wondering just exactly how much spam I get, and how it compares to actual e-mail (that is e-mail from real people and/or companies with which I do legitimate business). So for fun […]

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Interview Mania!

If you really have an itchin’ and burnin’ to hear me on the radio, you’ll have four — count them, four — chances to do so next week: Three on Monday and once on Tuesday. Here are the dates, times and stations: Monday, October 13, 7:40 AM EST WINK-FM Ft. Myers, FL Monday, October 13, […]

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