The Eight Hours Later Than Usual Roundup

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Posted on July 18, 2007
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“Your money is now our money and we will spend it on drugs!”
Simon Owens has written an extensive piece on Harriet Klausner, who is truly a menace to coherent sentences and taking a stand — two things that one would expect from a critic. If Harriet Klausner is a critic, I am a turtle chronically nibbling on Tetra Ropotmin who copulates four times a day with an even-toed ungulate.
Warren Ellis: “Note: cigarette breaks are built into all signing times.”
Christ, I can’t take this anymore. Fuck Raincoast. Get your Potter torrents here.* I do not endorse downloading the book, but someone has to offer a contrarian response to the insistent demands, protocols, and other wretched assumptions that the Harry Potter publishers have been dictating to the media, and which the media in turn has been willingly kowtowing too. Christ, folks, you’re literary journalists. Show some spine from time to time. Must you devote every column inch to this “phenomenon?” Any newspaper mention of the Deathly Hallows without the journalist actually reading the book is, as far as I’m concerned, nothing less than an ignoble junket. Nicholas Lezard has more reasons why you must take a stand. Look, if you want a damn good children’s series, seek out Lemony Snicket, which has more brains, imagination, and wit per book than J.K. Rowling has in her whole oeuvre.
You and me both, Brockman. I underwent a six-hour interview today in an effort to obtain my “cultural credentials.” At the end of the interview, the interlocutor took one of those little hammers out of his suitcase — the kind that doctors have. I thought he had intended to test my reflexes, but he decided to repeatedly hammer upon my molars while two guys in expensive suits were holding me down. This was, they said, “the final stage of the interview.” After half of my teeth were pulled out with a rusty set of pliers and I was left on the floor, paralyzed with pain, my gums bleeding onto the concrete, these three guys laughed and me. “You want your cultural credentials? There’s your cultural credentials!” Then they kicked me in the stomach and the nads, dislocated both of my shoulders, and shaved off my eyebrows. If anybody knows of a better way to earn “cultural credentials” (and, incidentally, if you know of a good dentist who works cheap), please drop me a line.
It appears that John Steinbeck’s granddaughter is going into the film industry as a scribe. Her first offering, I Travel With Charley in the Biblical Sense, should be uploaded to YouTube next week.
The independent publisher Night Shade Books is having a sale to clear out their warehouses. 50% off all titles, four book minimum. That means M. John Harrison, Iain Banks, Tricia Sullivan, the remarkably underrated Paolo Bacigalupi, and Joe Haldemann. Do help support Jeremy Lassen, one of the craziest motherfuckers in the science fiction industry.

* — And it appears that the Harry Potter snapper made a serious mistake.

Comments

6 Responses to “The Eight Hours Later Than Usual Roundup”

Doro loves pictures on July 18th, 2007 3:46 pm

This mentioned Potter movie is great.
I like it and how the actors have masterd to overcome their teenage acting handycaps. The movie is very entertaing, I find.
Chad on July 18th, 2007 3:54 pm

Boy is NY ever making you cranky.
Blue on July 18th, 2007 4:41 pm

Re: “Look, if you want a damn good children’s series, seek out Lemony Snicket, which has more brains, imagination, and wit per book than J.K. Rowling has in her left pinkie.”

Um, don’t you mean the reverse then? i.e. Snicket’s has more brains etc. in his left pinkie than Rowling does in her whole etc. etc.
DrMabuse on July 18th, 2007 5:46 pm

Thanks, Blue.
Brian on July 18th, 2007 7:34 pm

Snicket’s books are better than Rowling’s? How contrarian! Not in any way accurate, of course, but very contrarian. Kudos all!
Patrick Stephenson on July 19th, 2007 11:05 am

Lemony Snicket?! REALLY! Yes, sometimes you’re TOO contrarian, dear Ed.