Masked Professor Sighting!

Who is that mysterious man holding a copy of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus in his left hand? Could it be the masked professor incognito?

People Work At SellYourCell.Com!

An actual human being from SellYourCell.Com responded and said there had been a mistake and the check for my cell phone is in the mail! So the wife and I may be able to buy that ice cream cone after all! If so, then I'll have to revise my opinions of SellYourCell.Com, the state of Florida, and maybe even alligators!

Don't Sell To SellYourCell.Com !

So, I thought I would recycle a cell phone and get some cash back on it so the wife and I mailed off one of her older cell phones to SellYourCell.Com. I had the original box, cord, battery, and so forth and mailed it all off to this Florida company. I suppose I should have checked with The Better Business Bureau before I did so because Sell Your Cell had a long list of dissatisfied folks complaining about them, and had their membership revoked. Well, add me to the list of dissatisfied folks. They claimed the phone wasn't up to their standards, and sent me a form email stating such. However, whenever I ask them what specifically is wrong with the phone, they won't tell me; instead, they take a few days to respond and email back another form email that says pretty much the same thing the first email says, which is something to the effect of "the reasons for this vary but can include items reported as lost or stolen, items that are non-functional, or items that we do not offer to purchase." Well, it can't be the last item since they did indeed offer to purchase the phone, but they won't explain what specifically is wrong with the phone. Something smells rotten in Florida and it isn't just all those Al Gore for President ballots moldering in a swamp somewhere. So, I won't be dealing with SellYourCell.Com again, nor with what the BBB lists as any of their related companies (Cell Phone Recycler Telecommunication, Heimat Inc., Rush Ventures,Inc., Sell Your Cell.com, SellYourCell.Com, Sundog Inc., and Sundog Wireless), nor officers of the company: Renee Jackson, Curtis L Roeglin, and Silva Roeglin.
You know the wife and I were really looking forward to spending that $3 on a couple ice cream cones or something (ok, with inflation, maybe sharing an ice cream cone), but I guess the next time I want to recycle a cell phone I'll just give it away to a social services agency or something. At least, SellYourCell paid for the postage to mail the phone to Florida and offered to mail it back to me if I paid for the return trip. Uh, no thanks, SYC. Let the cell phone retire and reside, like so many older folks, and apparently confidence artists and swindlers, in the state of Florida. Maybe an alligator can eat it for a last hurrah.

Guild of Outsider Writers

The Guild of Outsider Writers has started running some of the reviews from this blog. First up is the review of The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers.

Emus Excerpt

Part of the first chapter of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, my garage band novel, is excerpted in INSCAPE, The Ursuline College Fine Arts Annual 2008, so if you're around Ursuline College, stop by and pick up a free copy. If you're not around the college, then just buy the whole book!

A Frightening Interview!

Karen Lillis interviewed me about my zine scholarship. Let's give a cheer that more and more libraries are interested in zines!

Review of The Digital Plague by Jeff Somers

Yes, this is the third day in a row I've posted on the blog. After posting about that many times the whole rest of the year, you may interpret this as a sure sign of the apocalypse. Speaking of apocalypses, the dystopian future Jeff Somers created in his novel The Electric Church is back in a sequel called The Digital Plague. Apparently Somers has a science-fiction series on his hands, starring his character Avery Cates, former assassin for hire (called a "Gunner" in the slang of the novel). And, even though Cates is basically a scumbag, he has more honor than the rest of the corrupt society so he becomes our hero by default of everyone else being so much worse (I'll employ this same logic no doubt when I vote for the Democratic candidate for president this fall). In addition, Cates has a bit of gruff humor in the manner in which he narrates the novel that makes his charm grow on you. In this novel, we see him even growing more of a conscience, which for the reader just makes Cates more convincing in his heroic role. However, in the savage world of the book where civilization has fallen apart (this time around even for the very rich, who were a bit more insulated from the daily carnage in the last novel), Cates's conscience is a liability, making him less likely to survive, and, consequently, due to the effects of the digital plague (yes, it literally is a digital plague of nanobots infecting human bodies) in the novel's plot, everyone's chances of survival. As a result, Cates spends the book basically getting beaten up (in fact, if Mel Gibson was a bit younger, he'd be perfect casting for Cates in a movie version since he seems to love masochism). Will Cates save the day? I can't say; the book doesn't get officially released until May 12, and I don't want to spoil the many surprises of the plot. But I will leave you this hint: There's a third book in the works. Fans of Somers's longtime zine The Inner Swine will find much to like here, as will any devotee of cliffhanger thrills, futuristic action, brutal humor, and thought-provoking commentary on the future of society and technology. I hope Somers's fictional world remains a disturbing fantasy, but sometimes wandering around Cleveland makes me think it might be just around the corner.