More of a status update than a web log.
So where are the hot'n'juicy links? some readers are thinking. I feel their thoughts coming up through the keyboard. Actually I see them in the computer's report on what people are reading.
Well...I've got into this pattern, lately. I allocate some time to reading the blog roll and e-mail. Every day I check the e-mail for anything real, y'know, hand-typed by a person I actually know. Then I read the e-mails that the Proton view flags as computer-generated and/or generated by a computer other than the one whose address they're using (meaning Book Funnel), which is 99.9 percent of the e-mails, from the top down for the time allotted. I read 10 to 20 e-mails per day. I receive 100 to 200 e-mails per day. There is clearly a problem; it would help if Book Funnel stopped spamming people who want to promote actual books and writers. Anyway, although I'm still on mailing lists for various news and writing sites, 97% of the e-mail comes from people who want to (1) sell me books, (2) send me review copies of books, or (3) nag me to post the reviews of the e-books they e-mailed to me last winter, which, if sent by e-mail, are probably still sitting in last winter's unopened e-mail. I don't receive a great deal of news links any more.
And very few of these people are even e-mailing about my books.
"Your books? I've not seen your books in Books-a-Million lately...?" No; the ones that have been there have been under other people's names. I have written more than three dozen books by now. Some have been revised and published under author names and titles other people chose. Some are still waiting for a satisfactory publishing deal. Some are the "Special Products" this web site offers, the PDF or printed compilations of blog posts; technically they've been distributed rather than published since they've not been sold in stores, but those first-book-manuscript contest judges count them as having been published since they want to give the prizes to 25-year-olds.
You can, of course, commission books. You knew that, didn't you? You can commission books you want to revise and publish as yours; you can commission books as souvenirs or special reports from me; you can even commission books you want to help publish as mine. They can be fiction or nonfiction, on almost any topic that has or has not been addressed in the blog posts as writing samples at this web site. They could contain gorgeous full-color pictures like some of the more recent posts at this web site, but while posting digital photos on a web site is "fair use," printing them in a book that is published for sale costs money. They can be poetry, recipes, humor, short stories, novels, or research. I enjoy the research most.
You can even commission term papers or dissertations. Of course, although it's legitimate and traditional to use other people's term papers and dissertations in your own research, meaning you can use many of the same quotes and footnotes, you will want to rewrite the papers so they sound like you and throw in references to things discussed in your class and things you found in your school library. How else is the professor going to know you wrote them? You will receive term papers that got A's, or would have got A's, somewhere. If you just give them to your professor as I write them, you'll probably get an F and possibly be expelled, because the professor will know they are my writing not yours. It's up to you to ensure school papers can get A's at your school.
And this is the week you need to vote: Do you want this web site to have a Zazzle page? If we have one, the Zazzlers whose work is displayed may get more money from each sale; Zazzle's offering extra commissions to people who add Zazzle store pages to their sites. And my Zazzle page will sit modestly on the side of the screen and not interfere with your scrolling, as the Zazzle page at the Mirror does. And you should be able to see the digital mock-up of whatever you're buying, customize it, and order it by clicking on pictures at the page. And you will have to buy some merchandise that is decent quality for whatever it is, T-shirts or tennis racket covers or postcards or matchbooks or fabric--Zazzle prints lots of different things--but is, at least by Gate City standards, heinously overpriced; you will have to pay in advance for mail-order products and deal with any problems in the mail-order process yourself. Zazzle, like Amazon, generally delivers satisfactory products in a reasonable time. Nobody is perfect.
Microsoft
It was a beautiful morning...and then Microsoft destroyed the afternoon by trying to force people to buy more Microsoft products. No, you can't use your Chrome browser! We want to show you the wonders of Microsoft Edge! The first mosquitoes of the season hatched this afternoon, too.
MICROSOFT EDGE IS NOW BANNED FROM THIS HOUSE. Nobody is allowed to use Edge for any purpose unless Microsoft is well and truly humbled, probably by an act of Congress, such that Chrome runs without a hitch, without a blink, without a noticeable "update," for TEN YEARS.
Boost Linux today, boost Linux today,
Oh, let's all go out and buy Linux today,
Because Microsoft are thieves, so let's make them pay!
Let's go and buy Linux today!
Anyone with the skills to reproduce what Microsoft Windows ME did, and to deliver complete web searches the way Google and Yahoo used to do, could submarine Microsoft and become a gazillionnaire. I mean you, Nephews. And the sooner the better.
War
I hate war, as such. Any and all war. There have to be better ways of settling disputes.
I also hate when people express opposition to war in ways that amount to propaganda for the other side.
Cartoon by Henry Payne for NationalReview.com; shared by Joe Jackson at TheViewFromLadyLake.com.
If the wind off that plane were to sweep those clueless cheerleaders into the cold salt sea, wouldn't it serve'm right? We declared war. We need to finish it. By finish I mean win. And then we need to stay out of any other wars. And yes, I think it might help if we stopped electing men, at least for long enough to break the habit of killing foreigners just to flog our failing economy back to life.
Iranian readers, if we have any: I'm sorry about all this. Obviously I was not consulted. You should not claim to become Christians unless you really intend to be Christians. Be what you are. Do what the rest of the world do. Surrender, stop building bombs, and guilt-trip us into building all the shiny new schools and hospitals you can use for the next thirty years.
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