bookfraud

It is an odd fact of human nature that some people will not plunk down $10 to see a 90-minute movie without the security blanket of overwhelming critical praise, yet they will gladly pay $25 for a book that could torture them for weeks without bothering to consider if the thing is any damn good.

I say this following the release of the New York Times’ “100 Most Notable Books” of 2006. I do not come to bury the Times’ list, but not to praise it, either, since I have read a grand total of zero selections.

It’s impossible to critique something you haven’t read. Wife has actually read one of the “100 Most Notable” — David Mitchell’s “Black Swan Green” — making the Bookfraud household a stellar 1 for 100. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a batting average of .010, which happens to match the on-base percentage of the Cubs’ new $136 million leadoff man.

In further research, I took a scientific poll using the list to see what readers were “likely” to read or what they were “interested” in reading. According to my results, poll takers selected 32 percent of the titles as something they might read, not a bad number when you consider the number of books.

Well, OK. Wife selected 17, and I added on another 15. But really. The fiction section didn’t make me want to run to the book store. Am I going to read yet another collection by Joyce Carol Oates? Or worthies like Jennifer Egan, Allegra Goodman, Cormac McCarthy, Colson Whitehead or Alice McDermott? Nope, primarily because there’s so much else to read (which is a bad thing, since modern fiction is no longer widely read).

Or even m I really going to read Marisha Pessl’s “Special Topics in Calamity Physics,” written by a gorgeous 20-something wunderkind, who is also an actress and surely could win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry if she just put her mind to it?

Pessl: proof that life is not fair

I can’t even say that I had any special enthusiasm for Thomas Pynchon’s “Against the Day,” which, by all accounts, sounds like a “Gravity’s Rainbow” retread. (There was a time when I inhaled everything the fellow wrote, seeking a higher understanding of humanity through the sheer density of his work, but I would ultimately have an easier time getting Pynchon to do shots of Jagermeister with me than comprehending his work.)

There’s plenty of novels, story collections, and the odd book of poetry thrown in. There’s the usual suspects (Updike, Roth, Oates) along with some lesser-known but talented names. Throw in a few foreign writers, and you got a list of fiction.

The non-fiction leaves me cold. Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” chronicles in detail what I already knew: the Bush White House is full of authoritarian nitwits, starting at the top.

There’s a book on Reconstruction, a couple on Hurricane Katrina, the usual memoir and celebrity (Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner) biographies. There’s science books, sports books, and quirky and intellectual histories (Spinoza Vs. Lebnitz, for instance).

I haven’t gone back and looked at last year’s list, but I would bet the contours are the same: 50 percent fiction, 50 percent non-fiction; 15 percent short stories, 12 percent books on food, 38 percent novels, 3 percent on intellectual history, etc.

But just about every book on the list has one thing in common: major houses published them.

You won’t find an unheard-of masterpiece in the lot, because the Times reviewed all of the books, and just about the only way a book can get reviewed is if a Random House or Knopf publishes it.

It also leads me to wonder what, precisely, “notable” means. I didn’t see a Nora Roberts, Nelson DeMille or chick lit book (though Stephen King’s “Lisey’s Story” made the cut), though a single novel from either Roberts or DeMille probably outsells all the rest of the authors put together. I didn’t see any “Sundays With Syd” or “The Eight Addictions of Highly Stupid Businesspeople,” either.

My kinda list

It would be easy to chalk this up to intellectual elitism; after all, even if a book sells 23 copies, that doesn’t mean it isn’t notable. If you want to be notable, you have to get reviewed by the New York Times; but to be reviewed by the New York Times, you have to be notable.

Thoughts? Comments? Can you get me Marisha Pessl’s phone number?

Over Thankgiving at the family home, I was exposed to a major problem that threatens households across our nation. It has nothing to do with breast feeding, reasonable day care, or the price of Huggies. Nor is it about affordable health care or killing several innocent adults to get your hands on a PlayStation 3. It is something more sinister.

The rot to which I refer is called “Thomas the Tank Engine.” And we have literature to blame.

For the uninitiated—that is, for those without children—this Thomas plague looks like just another innocent juvenile obsession. “Thomas” is a series of children’s books featuring a steam train engine with round eyes and moon face. He and his train “friends” reside on the island of Sodor (insert joke here), and have adventures about hauling freight, people, and farm animals (another joke here).

Humans and other anthropomorphized vehicles also reside on Sodor, which, upon close inspection, is quite like the island known as Great Britain, from where Thomas originated.

You can pee out of his face

This British Invasion is as bad as the War of 1812, and not nearly as entertaining as the Beatles. It has taken over the hearts and minds of children across the United States, infiltrating their souls with annoying songs and consumer lust to make Imelda Marcos blush. Specifically, it has taken over the life of my young nephew, who has been thick in the Heart of Darkness known as Sodor Island for at least half of his 42 months on earth. He plays with the trains, he watches the show, he hides in his Thomas the Tank Engine tent—it’s all Thomas, all the time.

You see, the books spawned a television show, first in England, and now in the U.S., along with Thomas train sets, which involve hundreds of miniature trains. Thousands of trains. Not to mention tracks, buildings, and other model-train-esque apparitions, both in wood and metal versions (Twice the Cost! Twice the Fun!). This ignores Thomas kiddie wear, bed sets, clocks, temporary tattoos, toenail clippers, and enema kits.

Google “Thomas the Tank Engine” and you are confronted with 1.36 million hits, many for buying Thomas the Tank Engines and Friends Craptastic Crap. (Personally, in the name of verisimilitude, I think they should have Thomas-brand anthracite coal, a three-fingered, one-eyed engineer action figure, and a soot-covered boiler doll that sings, “I’ve been working on the fucking railroad, all my fucking days.”)

“I transform into a wallet-sucking monster”

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. An Englishman by the name of Rev. W. Awdry started the book series in 1945. Since then, “a generation of children have grown to love the cheeky engine and friends on the Island of Sodor,” proclaims the Random House Web site. Apparently, the books just weren’t enough. Somebody named Britt Allcroft turned “Thomas the Tank Engine” into a television show in the 1980s, which, Random House says without a shred of irony, “can now be seen in over 120 countries and inspired a multimillion dollar ancillary entertainment empire.”

That’s it. It’s not about literature, it’s about maintaining the multimillion dollar ancillary entertainment empire! Rule Britannia!

This rant probably stems from the fact that I will soon be a father, and I am already making plans to keep this smoke-blowing monstrosity as far away from my child as possible. Of course, as parents will gladly point out, this is a futile endeavor. And if it isn’t Thomas, it’ll be Barney. Or Barbie. Or Carburetor Al, or something yet to be devised in a marketing guru’s evil dreams.

I’m sure the Thomas books are probably great reads. But they’ve turned children’s literature into product, aimed at the segment of the population most likely to Screaming Fits for Ancillary Junk. There are plenty of Dr. Seuss dolls and, of course, some great cartoons, but had Theodor Geisel lived to see “The Cat in the Hat” or “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” into live-action movies and Burger King figurines, he would have just let Sam I Am stick a fork in his heart rather than into green eggs and ham.

Resistance is futile

Every childhood pleasure is super-sized and turned into a commodity. It would behoove me to just accept this state of affairs, as I am sure that our little one will get hooked on something, and I guess it’s better to be obsessed Thomas the Tank Engine than Bratz dolls, violent video games, or bad books (the worst).

Now I have to go and buy more Pre-Baby Crap and complain about it on my blog.

Ah, it’s good to be back.

I am departing for a week to visit my family for Thanksgiving, in environs familiar, but not really my own.

They’ll be a computer at the house where Wife and I will be staying, though I doubt I will be able to use it to write of the Bookfraud Dysfunctional Family Holiday. This post will have to do for a week or so.

Over the past month or so—a period coinciding with my birthday—I have neglected the blog, but also others’ blogs that I regularly visit and comment upon. (The mere thought of it actually made me wince.) The combination of depression and insane busyness at work and home has not made a happy camper out of yours truly.

A couple of days ago, this blog was reviewed by a blog that reviews blogs. The site rates “humor blogs,” and though I don’t think of this blog as “ha ha ha, I’m gonna wet my pants!” funny, it was gratifying to be considered. Two areas stood out for reviewers, which I readily admit are shortcomings: design and frequency.

This got the gears working. Shouldn’t I redesign this tired old Blogger template? Maybe I should add really cool features and links, and even get my own domain name. Add podcasts! Video! Free beer! If need be, I could write more entries. Everybody would then flock to Bookfraud.

But what purpose would that serve? Just why the hell am I doing this?

I started blogging because I fancied myself a columnist, thought I might have something interesting to say, and didn’t have any other forum in which to do it. The fiction thing was grounded indefinitely, and I wasn’t really making concerted stabs at writing non-fiction.

I promised myself that the blog would be about “the writing life,” and I have tried to tie even the most arcane pieces of trivia to writing. Though my personal life often spills over into my entries, I try to make it relevant to spinning tales of fiction or fact.

I wasn’t going to blog about how the waiter at the restaurant treated me like a dog, politics, or pop culture, a rule I broke in about, I’d say, 5 minutes. And I starting writing “concept” blogs (for want of a better description).

“I don’t care how many people visit and comment,” I proclaimed to Wife, but of course I do.

I had an extremely unpleasant experience with an agent recently, and while many writers would have blogged about it as soon as they turned their computers on, it didn’t appeal to me, as would read like a six-year-old in an extended time-out.

The fact is yes, this is a “community,” and writers over the age of 17 know that the practice of writing is difficult and solitary. Blogging can connect us for support and advice. While I didn’t set out for this, it’s become perhaps the most rewarding part of blogging.

I received a simple comment on one of my entries lately: “Hi, Bookfraud,” from someone whose own blog I had not visited in some time. It made me a little queasy. Am I just going through the motions? Don’t I owe it to others to visit?

Which begs the question: why do we blog? Why do we choose what we blog about? And what do we expect to get out of the whole thing?

Have a happy Thanksgiving, y’all.

And R.I.P., Bo. M Go Blue.

Can you describe the following, with words you might use in everyday conversation?

If you said something such as “drawing,” “hubby,” “prison bitch,” “Johnny Depp in that movie,” “my crack dealer,” or “horny Uncle Jim,” you can be a writer!

It’s easy to enter the wonderful world of the written word. The Bookfraud School of Writing can help make your dreams of literary success come true—and you’ll be shocked at how easy it is!

Through our correspondence school, you will be able to master writing like never before! Just think: soon, you can be a full-fledged member of the world of “literature” without any difficult years of reading, classes, or endless hours at the computer.

You don’t need to get any fancy degrees like an M.F.A. in writing—I can tell you from personal experience, you’d do better by investing in Enron! And don’t worry if you lack a college or even high school degree, and your idea of “literature” is “Dancing With the Stars.” Our E-Z, stay-at-home, learn-at-your-own-pace course will have you writing in no time!

Here’s just a small sample of what you get with the Bookfraud School of Writing instruction plan.

Lesson 1 — The Basics: After your first check clears, you’ll receive a set of simple yet illuminating exercises to get you on the “road to riches.” For instance,

Every day, sit down with a pen and paper, and write for 10 minutes. Anything that comes to mind, as long as you keep putting words on paper. It will free your mind of doubt. Only use words with four letters or less.

Multiple choice: You’ve sat down to write but feel stuck. Do you a) keep trying; b) eat several bowls of Count Chocula; c) watch “Sanford and Son” reruns; or d) play “Wango Tango” at 11 and do air guitar with a pool cue? (Remember—there are no wrong answers!)

Learn at home!

Practice your sensory descriptions by filling in the blank: “Bookfraud is a _________. ” Be as detailed as possible—let your imagination run wild!

An adjective is a word that modifies a noun. An adverb modifies a verb. Use them wisely.

Lesson 2 — Intermediate Study: Following Lesson 1, you’ll receive a list of “writer’s secrets” that you’ll usually learn only after years of intense study. Take, for example, the following:

One of the most important lessons in writing is to “show, don’t tell.” It’s the same thing you might hear at a highway rest stop.

If you want to write a best-selling novel, include long chunks of dialog that sound like they’ve been lifted from a potted-meat food product instruction manual: “‘I beg of you to reconsider. You don’t want to use the XC-491 with the infrared scope and automatic re-loading, which is not to be confused with the XC-490, which had slight defects in the night vision gyroscoping, when you are in a firefight with maximum payloads in a high-stress battle situations when collateral civilian damage is feared. Please, as your wife, I beg you.’” (Tom Clancy, watch out!)

Lesson 3 — Advanced: Exercise your powers of description—and your lyrical use of language—by sending us a 10,000-word account of your hottest sexual experience. The more details, the better. In fact, send pictures. Double points if you are a lipstick lesbian, or if it involved three or more women.

Lesson 4 — Master’s Degree Level: Read The “DaVinci Code,” and study how Dan Brown structures his plot, writes dialog, and his use of language. If you think that this is a great book, you are halfway to writing your own best-seller.

And don’t forget to send in that second check!

Lesson 5 — Rocket Science: Now you’re really close to becoming a “master writer.” Sit down and write a novel of at least 300 pages. Don’t worry if it’s any good—we’ll be happy to critique it for a small fee.

Lesson 6 — Einstein and Beyond: It’s time to graduate! We’ll explore the “ins and outs” of finding a literary agent and publisher for your completed work. Don’t listen to those “nattering nabobs of negativism” who complain about their agents, and say it is impossible to get their novel published. It’s simple, and you don’t have to sleep with more than two strangers, neither of whom has an STD!

Don’t worry if those lessons seem difficult—our handy, 15-page instruction booklet will guide you through the process!

Brainfood for writing

But don’t fret if the “world of fiction” isn’t for you. There’s helpful tips on obtaining a writing jobs in accounting, aerospace, agriculture—and that’s just for the letter “a”!

Yes, the Bookfraud School of Writing can help you get that career you’ve always dreamed of, like writing technical literature for auto-parts manufacturers.

And remember, if all else fails, you can always write a blog!

Sign up today! (Cashier’s checks or money orders only.)

Let’s face it, Brit. You’re not as hot as you used to be. Your marital problems generate bigger headlines than your concert tours. The 55-hour nuptials and this “FedEx” divorce are national punch lines.

But I write this as a friend, not a critic, despite the fact I am completely unfamiliar with your music (though I did come up with some particularly vile alternative lyrics to “Oops!…I Did It Again” when I had too much to drink at a baby shower).

Though it was you who filed divorce papers, it’s just a matter of time before K-Fed strikes back in the press. He’s already asking for custody of the kids. You have to nail him, fast. And I know how.

Let me write your memoir.

“Help write” your memoir, I mean. I don’t mean this “Britney Spears’ Heart to Heart” stuff that you wrote with your mother. Or any of that autobiographical, pre-packaged paperback pabulum that you “wrote.”

No, I want to help write a hard-hitting, brutally honest work that will flatter the memoirist’s art. To wit:

When I first met Kevin, he was a dancer doubling as a pizza delivery driver. But I am not one to dwell on looks or status. I immediately saw that despite appearances, a talented, wonderful, tender, sensitive, strong man stood before me. Even though he was seriously lacking in the “manhood” department.

Now that’s great writing, my midriff-baring friend!

Follow in Bill’s footsteps

There are many angles you have to consider. FedEx is going to toast you for that little problem with “Driving Miss Baby.” Britney, I beg of you, get this book out now so you can tell your side of the story:

Kevin was pleading for a fix. “Please, you have to give up the drugs and place your trust in Christ,” I pleaded, but he was holding Sean hostage with a stapler. I had to run out fast and barrel past the paparazzi in the driveway. That’s why you saw all those unfortunate pictures of me with baby Jayden in the car, when it looked like I was using the little bundle of joy as an airbag.

And what about this:

The men in his wedding party wore track suits that said “Pimps” on them. We handed out wedding gift bags that had jeans and candy. Then he had the idea about calling himself K-Fed, even though I warned him it sounded like the name of a prison—or a dog food! And then he released that video of me totally sounding stoned, and then the sex video thing!

All of this was Kevin’s idea!

You see how your side of the story gets fair play? You’re not going to get that in the Inquirer, I promise you that!

I must admit there is a personal agenda on my part. People don’t think writers are worth more than a pile of used pooper scoopers. That we don’t really have a place in the world other than in entertainment or journalism, professions with little public esteem. But I want to change things, starting with you.

If you had advisors who were worth a damn, you would have filed your divorce papers concurrent with the release of your autobiography—it’s kind of like Noveltainment! Your real-life woes would be packaged with your real-life book sales! And you get the upper hand in the publicity department, to boot!

The greatest thing about writing your memoirs—hold on to your piercings—is that they don’t have to be true. You can “stretch” things, like Our Friend James Frey, just adding little details so that things are “truer” than they were before.

Addicted to Brit!

Take, for example, the following:

I had heard all about Christina Skankuilera—that’s her real name, by the way—so I invited her to church to meet her. While I wore my Sunday best, she was just wearing a butt-floss thong and no top. Needless to say, she was never invited back to church!

I mean, this isn’t true, in the sense it didn’t really happen. But since it illustrates a larger truth about her, and she can’t prove she doesn’t wear butt-floss (take a look at her videos!), there’s no harm.

You’ll be able to resurrect your entertainment career with one fell stroke. You’ll sell a million books, and be able to redeem yourself in your fans’ eyes.

The capper? I’ll only take 25 percent off the top of your advance and royalties. Consider it a discount from a friend who is looking out for your best interests, one who isn’t concerned with his amoral, greedy self, just like Col. Tom Parker was with Elvis, except I’m not a Dutch nutjob gambling addict like Col. Tom (and not Elvis, who handled fame and fortune with perfect grace and proportion—just like you).

Like most any man crashing into middle age, yours truly could afford to shed a few pounds, especially considering that my knees and back are slowly disintegrating into a fine powder-like substance one associates with ground chalk.

Of course, I want to be in good health when Wife gives birth next year, so it would pay for me to lose weight. As an exacting, thorough researcher, I have discovered the following fool-proof, scientifically proven, guaranteed-not-to-fail weight-loss techniques: the Palm Beach Diet, the Akins Diet, the Ultra Lipo Lean diet, the Laze Diet System, the Phat Predator diet, the Loose the Bums Diet, and, my favorite, something called “Zumba by Beto,” which has the distinction of sounding like the name of an Orc in the Slavic-language version of “The Lord of the Rings.”

I imagine that in this pantheon of diets is the idea that if one expends more calories than one consumes, weight will indeed be lost. The simple plan for me would be to lay off the nightly six-packs of Schlitz Special Reserve.

Research apparently posits that low-calorie diets will help prolong life, with some adherents to this philosophy eating 1,500 calories a day, though most people on such limited nourishment are so weak that they can’t think of anything except their next meal, have stopped paying attention to the world at large, and will be hit by a bus.

(And if it turns out tomorrow morning that the bad guys keep control of Congress, I’ll put on 10 pounds this week, cashing in my Dunkin’ Donuts gift certificates.)

She never went to Taco Taco Taco Bell

Diet plans generally do not inspire great literature—Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” aside—but food and drink does, all the way back to Eve pulling that damn apple off the tree, continuing through that first Roman who said “in vino veritas,” through Rabelais, that fine master of excess, and so on.

But “food writing”—non-fiction about the “art of eating” and other such swill—that’s another rodeo altogether. I’ve always thought that food and wine reviewing must be one of the hardest of all critical pursuits. You can only describe how something tastes in so many ways until fresh adjectives become scarcer than truffles; I would get stuck after “hot and spicy,” “spicy like,” and “spicy spice.”

I imagine there are great sentences in describing the joys of food, but while I love to eat and drink, I am no connoisseur of food and wine writing. If something tastes good, I like it, if it tastes bad, I hate it, and no amount of verbal bullying is going to make me enjoy olive paste or curried tomato chutney.

There was a time when I met in succession several comely women who said they wanted to quit their professional job and become a food writer, “like M.F.K. Fisher,” who wrote several memorable tomes on food. I hadn’t read the estimable Ms. Fisher, but this “I wanna write like M.F.K.” mania, which seemed to have peaked in the early 1990s, was replaced with “I wanna write a screenplay” craze, then “I wanna write children’s books,” and finally “I wanna write a blog (and get a book deal),” all of which were elaborate ways of saying “I wanna do anything but spend one more fucking day as a lawyer.”

One detects the faintest whiff of superiority in such types, especially those who declare themselves “foodies.” Not only does the word make no sense, it is one of the Five Worst Words of All Time, and anyone describing themselves a “foodie” to my face is in grave danger of having their lunch money forcibly removed from their person.

Foodie-like snobbery+wine=raging alcoholic

Calling oneself a “foodie” probably means, “I really enjoy food, much more than others, to the point of obsession.” I guess that makes a lover of Bach or Black Flag a “musicie,” and, if obsession is the standard, by nature the male half of the human race are “fuckies.” Me, I’m a “musicie fuckie readie writie sportsie combat-robotie,”* and in a few months, “daddyie.”

Which brings us back to the whole diet thing. To be fair, as Wife grows into round tumescence, I should probably hop on the Lose LBS Express. Still, my weight is probably the least of my worries. There’s baby crap to buy, wills to write, insurance to consider. There’s birthing classes to take and many more trips to the doctor. And many books on parenthood to read, hopefully none authored by an unhappy lawyer in dear need of a career change.

*After the original posting, I remembered another one: “tittie.”

Deadly fear. Self-sabotage of the highest order. A vicious circle of procrastination, inaction, frustration; then, more procrastination.

Any one of the above describes how the writing life is treating me—or rather, how I’ve been treating the writing life in recent weeks.

It goes beyond mere output. Instead of writing fiction, penning my blog, watching television, downloading porn, brewing beer, bungee jumping, moving to an ashram, or even reading a book that consists of more than 1,000 words, all of my time, energy, and precious little mental health has been spent in a futile pursuit, a destructive and banal effort that threatens my livelihood.

Sudoku. Again.

Every evening, I retire to my study (the “man room,” as Wife calls it, citing the beer cans and issues of “Bonerama Monthly” on the floor), fire up the ol’ iMac, and let my fingers clack away on the keyboard. If one was eavesdropping—I might play some Bach or Schubert to confuse a snooper—he or she might assume I was happily typing my way to a best seller, untold riches, and a spot on the U.S. National Figure Skating Team.

Unfortunately, as all the taps are simply my fingers entering numbers, all the clicks are my mouse moving over the grid of an online sudoku puzzle. This particular Web site allows yourself to rank yourself against others, and I will work on puzzle after puzzle to “beat” the average time.

I try the “Hard” puzzles and pride myself when I complete them under 10 minutes. Like an addict, however, this high is simply temporary, and I must continuously push the edge of sanity to get a buzz. I move on to the “Evil” puzzle and try to finish it under than 15 minutes.

This is not exactly shooting heroin, but still.

I have refered to this Japanese-bourne illness in the past, and if I were a conspiracy theorist or racist, I would posit that sudoku was invented to destroy American capitalism, reducing us to robot junkies whose productivity is spent on filling in a box with numbers. (Not unlike anime, the PlayStation, toilets with cameras, or the ultimate weapon, Hello Kitty.)

This photo has no bearing on anything

What makes sudoku doubly evil is one can rationalize that it is not a waste of time. Unlike watching pro wrestling or Fox News, sudoku operates on the premise that you are doing something “smart.”

Make no mistake about it, sudoku is addictive, at least to a geek like myself. Why bother with grappling with yet another underwritten and disliked story that won’t see the light of publication when you can smoke a puzzle in less than 10 minutes? Why try to rewrite a particularly nasty passage in the novel when you’ve got this harmonic convergence of numbers, calling my name, awaiting my pen?

If you are saying, “Enough with the blogs about how you waste your time, because I can procrastinate and waste the precious minutes remaining in the hourglass of our pitifully short existences on earth in ways you can only dream about, you stupid neurotic writer,” I [heart] your pain. If there’s something I do better than writing about writing, it’s writing about ways not to write.

But, as an old editor of mine used to say at length, if you don’t have a reason for writing a story, there’s no reason anybody’s going to read it, so I actually have a reason for sharing my latest pathetic psychodrama.

I will admit this: my obsessions—my fears, actually—these days have no limits, and the more I consider it, the more I realize that sudoku is just a way for me to deal with the fear. I am plaited with anxiety, but not from work, my marriage, or the despair that Paris Hilton (R-Hollywood!) will be president one day.

I suffer from fear of what, you ask? What could change my attitudes towards work and life, to the point that I turn to a puzzle instead of living out what I once considered a Manifest Destiny of literary fame? This fear is familiar to many of you: the fear that I will never create again.

A common fear, one that haunts every artist and probably doesn’t merit more than 30 seconds of deep consideration. Yet mine is specific in its scheduling: in five months, I will cease to write for the foreseeable future, forsaking my love of the written word in favor of another, a love that Wife and I will share, whose activities in life will consist of sleeping, eating, crapping, crying, whose arrival makes me sick with worry, who will turn my cynical essence to mush and turn Wife and I into the protective equivalent of a psychotic Mamma Bear, and who shall, I predict, if we do not lose our sanity from lack of sleep, make our hearts swell to proportions I thought not possible.

Smashing, baby!

(And if so inclined, I might even write about the new arrival, and produce verbiage that is sappier than a forest of pine trees. You have been warned.)

(Phone rings)

Hello?

(Silence.)

Hello?

(Silence.)

Hello?

(Long pause.)

Hello, this is Jim Dongle, asking for your help on November 7.

Hello?

On November 7, this country will go to the polls to decide what they want for this country’s future. Now, my opponents will have you think that their tax-and-spend, pro-abortion, cut-and-run platforms are good for the nation—

(Hangs up.)

(Next day. Phone rings.)

Hello?

Hi, my name is Jim Dongle–

Goddamnit, hello?

…and in a few days, you’re going to the polls to decide whether you want a strong, steady voice in Congress, or a weak pussy Democrat–

Goddamn fucking recorded message! (Hangs up.)

(Next day. Phone rings. “Blocked Number” on Caller I.D., but Bookfraud foolishly answers, hoping a certain woman is returning his calls.)

Hello? Uma, is that you?

Hello, this is Jim Dongle. If you don’t elect me, Osama will become Dictator, sell you into slavery, and worst of all, take away your SUV as we cede the country to the bad guys.

Vote early, vote often

(Slams phone to receiver. Calls directory assistance. Gets phone number. Calls it.)

Hello, the Campaign to Re-Elect Jim Dongle. Hello?

Recorded voice: “Hello, my name is Bookfraud. And on November 7, I want Jim Dongle to help me—”

(Person on other end hangs up, but is immediately called back.)

Hello, the Campaign to Re-Elect Jim Dongle.

Recorded voice: “With your help, candidate Dongle, I want to eliminate the politics in the writing world. Together, I know we can do it.”

(Hangs up. An hour later, phone rings)

Hello, the Campaign to Re-Elect Jim Dongle.

Recorded voice: “You see, Jim Dongle has the power to ensure that the thousands of crappy books published each year don’t see the light of day. On November 7, Jim Dongle, using special powers given to him by the President, will declare a moratorium on book publishing in this nation, in the name of security.”

I’m not hanging up, whoever you are. Just play your tape and get it over with.

Recorded voice: “Thanks. As I was saying, Jim Dongle can put a stop to the plague of awful literature sickening our great nation. We can make sure that Dan Brown, Danielle Steele, and Candice Bushnell never subject American readers to the nauseating dogshit they call literature.”

Uh-huh.

Recorded voice: “Think of it. A land in which great literature flows across the open prairie, from sea to shining sea. A land in which people of all colors, ethnicities, and body types can be free of the weight upon our necks known as Chick Lit or Fan Lit or quasi-plausible thrillers and courtroom dramas. A land in which we all read books by great writers, like myself.”

Yeah, whatever. Are you going to do what, a book burning or something?

Bad books win, he wins

Recorded voice: “Well, hell, let’s get this out in the open! If you can record my phone conversation and torture innocent men because they own a copy of the Qu’ran, you can give me the power to save this nation from a threat as great as terrorism!”

Bad books? You think terrorism is the same as bad books?

Recorded voice: “If our nation is continuously subjected to crap literature and Ann Coulter, their brains will turn to mush! We will just become a nation of docile TV watchers who allow the forces of fascism to take over just as long as we have our Plum Sykes and John Grisham! If ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ wins, the terrorists win!”

OK, are you happy now? Are you going to stop calling?

Recorded voice: “Thank you for your time. I’m Bookfraud, and I approved this message.”