Curse you, Harper's Subscription Department, for making me think T.C. Boyle had died

While I like Harper's Magazine for their short readings at the beginning (there really should be whole magazines made up of these. They are like the internet, only if it only consisted of really interesting or bizarre stuff, inverting the real internet's 1/100000 interesting to tedious ratio), the Harper's Index, and the great essays and articles by many of my favorite writers, I do not like their subscription department, not at all. Especially after receiving a letter from them today with this message on the back in large print: "Goodbye: Kurt Vonneget, (somebody really old), (somebody really old), T.C. Boyle, (other stuff).

My first thought was, oh shit, T.C. Boyle died. I liked his books (Friend of the Earth, Tortilla Curtain, and Talk Talk recently). They put him in some weepy dead writer anthology. Then I opened the envelope and realized they were just trying to get me to renew. Shame on you for using these scare tactics, subscription people! What if T.C. Boyle's Mom gets this letter? Did you think about that? Try harder next time.

If you've read the title, you've pretty much read the book.

Here are some great books I found while wandering about on Amazon. They seem to be geared toward people without a lot of time for reading. Today's entry is also geared toward those people.

Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't (Hardcover)
by Robert Spencer

In his pre-teen years he won fame as the author of: My Dad can Beat Up Your Dad: My Dad Played Football in High School and Yours Didn't

Indoctrination U:The Left's War Against Academic Freedom (Hardcover)
by David Horowitz (Author)

I was a Physics major, and I bitterly recall liberal professors trying to suppress wave-particle duality, so this one hits home.

Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (Hardcover)
by James Piereson (Author)

On the other hand, it gave 40-year-old white guys in living in their parents' basement something relatively harmless to occupy their time, so look on the bright side.

War Crimes: The Left's Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror (Hardcover)
by Robert "Buzz" Patterson (Author)

That Michael Moore sure does scare the bejeezus out of guys named "Buzz". I envy his paranormal powers in this arena.

Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't (Hardcover)
by John R. Lott Jr. (Author)

John R. Lott Jr. was clearly inspired by Freakonomics' title and cover art. He promises to show:' Why the controversial assertions made in the trendy book Freakonomics are almost entirely wrong', but the market has spoken, John R. Lott Jr., and you fail it (Freedomnomics is at #4736 on Amazon's sales list at this writing, Freakonomics is #107).

The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault (Hardcover)
by Robert H. Jr Dierker (Author)

I think we all know what timid souls lawyers and judges are, and how difficult it is to get them to speak out about things that are important to them. I'm glad one of these judges was able to came out of his shell.

Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children (Hardcover)
by David Harsanyi (Author)

I can see that you're upset, David. Thanks for using your words.

And this one is kind of the War and Peace of the bunch:

Outrage: How Illegal Immigration, the United Nations, Congressional Ripoffs, Student Loan Overcharges, Tobacco Companies, Trade Protection, and Drug Companies Are Ripping Us Off . . . And (Hardcover)
by Dick Morris (Author), Eileen Mcgann (Author)

...and.....you're pissed off because you bought the iPhone the day it came out and then the price dropped? What? We'll have to wait until the next book cover for the answer.

I'm happy to report I am rabies free

I just finished reading Rant by Chuck Pahlihalinukanukaluau. It was perhaps in some ways a mistake, given my hypochondriac ways, as the title character is a venom-addicted redneck who spreads rabies to the masses (a superspreader - patient-zero is an obsolete term). Chuck P. being a writer who does his homework (most writers do their homework, but the proliferation of books by people who never should have written books like Sean Hannity and Shaq, and the festering cess-pools of blogs by graphomaniacal opinionated jerks has diluted the quality of the term 'writer'), the reader is treated to all the essential details about the effects of rabies, and he throws in info about other deadly diseases and plagues on top.

The 'Party Crashing' business in the book makes one think of a guy pitching a movie ('It's like 'Fight Club', but WITH CARS'), and throughout I couldn't help but think, yeah, sure, you feel alive in that moment when your car hits another, and then you get 40+ years of your lower back killing you. It's entirely unglamorous if you screw it up and don't manage to obliterate yourself, James Dean style. I am old and risk-averse, though, so fuck what I think. Did I like the book? Yes. SPOILER ALERT: Chuck does some interesting and unexpected things over the course of the book. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

The book has made me paranoid about my cats or insects in the house giving me a horrible illness, but I've been paranoid about my cats ever since reading about how Toxoplasma from cats can make people...paranoid.