Matthew Paulson: “It turns out that many of our nation’s upscale restaurants, places such as Applebees and Chilli’s are actually a lot less healthy for you than if you were to go down to McDonalds and get your favorite meal.”
Author / Edward Champion
Is BlogAds Scamming Bloggers?
You may recall that I initiated a pledge drive here. The reason for this was because BlogAds had failed to pay me out for ads that had run on this site. The remaining ad, for which I have still not been paid for, was a large, month-long ad in September from the Library of Congress that appeared here and on other literary blogs. The payment was due by the Library of Congress on September 30th. Well, the money didn’t arrive then and it didn’t arrive by October 30th. Which meant that even if it does arrive by the end of this month, I’m not going to see it until December 15th. (BlogAds pays out bloggers on the 15th of each month — for monies that have come in by the end of the previous month.)
Since I received no response — indeed, no information whatsoever — from BlogAds on what was happening, I was forced to become my own collection agency. After a few voicemails to Matt Raymond, Raymond was good enough to promptly inform me that the Contracts Office had indeed executed this order. Indeed, when I contacted him a few weeks ago, Raymond had passed along my concerns to Marc Wasserman, the middleman at BlogAds who had set this up.
But Wasserman has not given me any information as to when the Library of Congress paid BlogAds. Indeed, he failed to email me weeks ago and he has failed to reply to any of my emails on the subject. This presents Matt Raymond and I with an awkward situation, having to atone for the lack of communication and professionalism by Wasserman and BlogAds.
In other words, as far as BlogAds is concerned, bloggers come last and they can be paid three months after an ad appears, as far as they are concerned. If they are indeed holding onto the money rightly due to me and other bloggers who ran the Library of Congress ad, for which they have collected a commission, then this is an unethical operation. It does not help matters that Wasserman has remained dishonest and uncommunicative about the true status of payment. I understand that sometimes things happen. But not communicating is worse than laying down the cards of truth.
It turns out that BlogAds actually has a history of screwing over bloggers. Billy Dennis experienced a similar scenario. The monies were received before the end of the month and BlogAds failed to register it properly within their system and reducing a month-long ad after the fact to two weeks, causing Dennis to be paid late.
If Wasserman does not provide an answer to me in the next two days, then I am done with BlogAds for good and I will proceed with alternative options. (And if there’s a service along these lines who can promise communication and competence, I’m happy to entertain offers.) I’m not supposed to be the one making calls and trying to collect and clarify. Wasserman and BlogAds are.
The moral of the story: BlogAds cares more about “ads” than they do about “blogs.” And if you’re expected a professional and reliable sideline, you’re going to be in for a major disappointment.
[11/9 UPDATE: I’ve spoken on the phone with Miklos Gaspar at BlogAds. We had a constructive conversation about this imbroglio and exchanged respective information. Gaspar was apologetic about the lack of response. He says that the Library of Congress has not paid. I have also put in calls to the Contracts Office at the Library of Congress to find out what has happened, including one gentleman who gave me an elaborate overview of how contracts are signed and payment is allocated. It is very possible that this is caught up in governmental red tape. So for all the bloggers who ran this ad and didn’t get paid, I’m hoping to get a very specific idea about when everybody will get paid for this ad early next week.]
Otto Peltzer on the National Book Awards
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Is Otto Peltzer Otto Penzler? Note the surname.]
Not that I want to say anything negative about literary critics, for I am a literary critic. I am indeed the best literary critic. When it comes to blowhards, there can be no better specimen than myself. And I have the trophy wife and the bookstore to prove it. If you don’t believe me, I can show you my chaise longue and perhaps we can come to a financial agreement pertaining to what you can do with something nestled beneath my own zipper.
Yet it often seems that other literary critics remain lost and troublingly incompatible with my dignified and nonpareil tastes, which are better than Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, and Edmund Wilson combined. I, Otto Peltzer, have long understood that the Caucasian male is the only qualified author to write the major literary works of our time. And yet looking at the National Book Award nominees, one sees some mousy chick named Lydia Davis among the lot, who has apparently been awarded something called a MacArthur fellowship. This was a fellowship in which I had no say and thus must be disregarded. Who are the people responsible for Davis’s inclusion in the longlist? And why do they threaten the white male’s domination over today’s literature?
I am convinced that Denis Johnson is responsible for this. It has been impossible to avoid Tree of Smoke because it is big and fat, and written by a white male, and thus “important” in some way. I’ll spare you supportive examples. I am Otto Peltzer and you’re just going to have to take my word for it. Tree of Smoke is bad because there are two nouns in the title and because I couldn’t get past the first sentence. Although I should observe that Johnson was born in Munich, which is certainly a promising nation for the literary master race.
I can also tell you, without citing anything specific, that Denis Johnson is as baffled about Lydia Davis as I am. A distant cousin tells me that his friend read an interview with Denis Johnson written by another friend. In this interview, Johnson confessed this. Therefore, this must be true.
Who’s read Denis Johnson? And who’s read Lydia Davis? Otto Peltzer has. And that’s all you need to know.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be settling into my den with some claret and my Hardy Boys books — far more important than any of the National Book Awards finalists and celebrating the experience of white male power in a manner that this year’s crop of finalists certainly cannot.
An Aqua Dots Conspiracy?
There are reports now circulating that Aqua Dots, a toy manufactured in china, contain a chemical that converts into a date rape drug. This has caused Aqua Dots to be recalled. But Josh Glenn is having none of this. He believes that the story here is too neat and that there is something fishy going on. Is this a clever marketing ploy designed to raise attention for Aqua Dots? And will eBay become a drug trafficking site for those hoping to purchase recalled Aqua Dots and extract the coating for diabolical use in social situations? (Come to think of it, I’m now wondering just how much of eBay is devoted to drug trafficking. Gives the buyer rating a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?)
The Funny Side of Vollmann
There seems to be a misperception among certain literary types — one I have been attempting to rectify for quite some time — that William T. Vollmann, in writing about the underworld and heavy topics, lacks a sense of humor. To quell these charges, here’s the disclaimer page from Vollmann’s forthcoming trainhopping book, Riding Toward Everywhere, which threatens to veer my attention from all the other books I have to read right now:
I have never been caught riding on a freight train. So let’s say I have never committed misdemeanor trespass. The stories in this book are all hearsay, and the photographs are really drawings done in steel-gray crayon. None of the individuals depicted are any more real than I. Moreover, train hopping may harm or kill you. Finally, please consider yourself warned that the activities described in this book are criminally American.
This book was written at a time of extreme national politics. These circumstances shaped my thoughts about riding trains in specific ways described below. Accordingly, I have left all references to the current administration in the present tense. As the Russians would say, he who has ears will hear.