Month / December 2005

by Edward Champion

How to Get My Attention

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I didn’t get blasted by this SoulKool agent. But for any publicists who want to tickle my fancy, it’s actually quite easy to do: (a) read my blog and figure out what I’m interested in, (b) direct your emails to me personally, (c) have a sense of humor or a spirit of playfulness, (d) understand that I receive somewhere in the area of 3-20 books a week and that I obviously can’t read them all, (e) don’t expect me to necessarily love your book (I’m not a shill) and (f) realize that there’s pretty much only one guy running this site (and that includes research, production and engineering for each Segundo podcast, which is probably around 15-20 hours per show).

(And here’s a hint: three Segundo interviews came to be because publicists and/or authors factored in each and every one of those six points.)

by Edward Champion

Still Snowed Under

Folks, I’m seriously bogged down and I won’t be particularly verbose here until after Thursday. In lieu of content, I leave you with this thought.

The picture on the right is from Outlook Express. It is from Version 6.00.2800.1123, which was released roughly around October 2001. If you open the program up in Windows, you’ll see it on the default image on the right-hand side. Now the pen watermark graphic I can understand. But what’s with the glasses?

If the idea here is that the act of checking your email, let alone writing one, is somehow an intellectual status symbol, then I’d like to know what makes email intellectual, given that most of it is composed of emoticons, endless acronyms and outright stupidity (“DOOD! Check out this KOOL Flash animation of a guy falling on his ass! HAHAHAHAhahahaHAHAHA!!!”). And that’s not counting the strange Santa spam.

by Edward Champion

Fusion City

I really wish I could make this, but other pressing obligations keep me chained to the computer (and likely will result in scattershot updates for the first half of this week). But if you’re in San Francisco tonight, check out Kate Braverman’s Fusion City, “a literary talk show,” over at Edinburgh Castle. She’ll be talking with Kim Addonizio, Charlie Anders, Katai Noyes and Michelle Richmond. Plus, there will be a performance artist named Daphne Gottlieb.

by Edward Champion

Open Memo to the Pathological Woman Who Keeps Emailing and Telephoning and Otherwise Harassing Me

We went out once. We didn’t click.

And yet you persist in leaving me five voicemails a day (no, contrary to the pathological excuses you’ve been inventing to justify your looneytunes zeal, my voicemail is functioning quite well; unfortunately, just too fucking well) and cluttering my inbox with all manner of deranged JPEG attachments of coffeehouses we “might be able to meet in.”

In case it isn’t salient by now, I wish you well, but I have no interest in meeting you, much less exchanging a single word with you, ever again.

Most ordinary humans take the hint and move on with their lives. Despite polite and carefully worded language from me thanking you but suggesting that we weren’t exactly the Bob and Betty Wills of our day, you insist in your indefatigable efforts. What part of “Do not call me again” did you not parse? I mean, I think that’s a pretty lucid message, don’t you think?

One would think that at the age of 35, such basic laws of human interaction would be familiar to you by now. And yet you persist.

Since you seem equally intent upon tracking my every online move and responding with some commentary about “what a genius I am” (newsflash: I’m not), I’m hoping that in posting this message, some reasonable element within your being will finally wake up and stop calling me. Failing that, there’s a movie you might want to see that illustrates precisely what has gone wrong (since this has been a common theme in your nutbar voicemail solilioquys). That movie is Play Misty for Me. To be absolutely certain you understand what’s going on here, I’m the Clint Eastwood character. Got it?

Very truly yours,

Edward Champion