Holy Shit! Way to go Steve Almond! Almond is a writer and he quit his job at something-or-other university becasue they invited Condaleeza Rice to speak. If there were more Steve Almonds in the world we might actually, dare I say, be better off.

(via bookslut)

ATTENTION! FREE BOOK CONTEST!

Yes, another contest with the prize being a FREE COPY OF COME CLOSER, now in paperback for your DELIGHT and AMAZEMENT. I have been authorized by the powers that be to give you, the consumer, this lovely book for FREE as a token of appreciation for taking the time to read this website.

But first you have to win the contest. By the way, this contest is void where prohibited. If it's prohibited in any specifically deliniated area, it is also void in that same area.

This week's contest question is in the form of an essay: the first person to write me a kind note to say hello that brightens my day will get a free copy of COME CLOSER. That's the contest.

And Dad, I know you just started reading my blog, but you're ineligable.

I was in barnes & noble the other day and I came across a hideous monstrosity the likes of which no human has ever seen before. Okay, it wasn't that bad. What IT was, was the new John Dunning book--Dunning is a mystery writer whose main protaganist is a rare-book guy, very fun and educational books--so his new book, which I was so looking forward to and I'm sure is wonderful, was there on the shelf, but it was ... funny looking. Deformed. It wasn't a trade paperback and it wasn't a mass market paperback. It was some malformed, never-intended-by-God hybrid of the two, all the shoddiness and inelegance of a mass market but taller and, more to the point, TEN FUCKING DOLLARS.

Publishers! Listen up! Are you insane? Do you want Dunning to sell LESS books? Is that your goal? Becasue you're doing a fine job--ten dollars is, frankly, with all the books I have to buy (research materials, books by friends and acquaintances, etc), enough for me to wait for this, a book I'll read purely for pleasure, to hit either the library or the second-hand market. The advantage of a trade paperback is that it is of higher quality and will last longer than a mass market (setting aside the judgement implied in such; more literary titles usually go to trade pb, more popular to mm pb). This book looked as likely to fall apart as a regular mass market. Since I first noticed this, by the way, I've seen it everywhere; I only single out Dunning becasue I was especially looking for his book.

Dunning is also a poor author to try your experiments on, folks--start with Stephen King, Dean Koontz, etc., but Dunning, I would imagine, is still building his audience and really doesn't need to be a guinea pig. There's a special irony here becasue his books are about books.

These people should be working to make books either cheaper or nicer, heavy on the cheaper. No one wants to pay two or three dollars more for the same book with thin acidy paper, shoddily-glued binding, just an inch taller. No one wants to pay three dollars more for an extra inch or two. We're not hiring a porn star, we're shopping for books, and length doesn't matter.

I saw Francis Fukuyama on the John Stewart show the other night. This guy is a thinker/writer who used to be connected with the evil think tank Project for The New American Century. He was one of the folks to push Bush into war; although he later changed his mind and backed off before we invaded, he had at first pushed for it.

So I wrote this long post about him and than I realized I had been somewhat unfair, and I took it down. Than I read this and got pissed off all over again. He claims in here that he shouldn't be criticized for changing his mind. He's right. He shouldn't be. But I think he's lying. I don't think he's changed his mind based on new information, as he claims, but he either changed his moral compass (which he denies), or decided to ditch the losing team while he still could when it became clear we would lose the war. There was never any morally acceptable reason for invading Iraq. I know sadam hussein was a bad guy. But if morality was our guide, there were and are much worse situations to help out in first. All over Africa, people are and have been begging for our help, and we've been ignoring them. So here's the post, if anyone is interested, keeping in mind that I know I'm being a little unfair towards Francis as an individual, but I think my basic premise as per these types is okay:

Now, usually I try to be nice here, but I have to say: Francis Fukuyama is a liar. He's yapping to John Stewart about how "we" were misled as to the reasons for invading iraq; "we" were told reason number one was WMD, number two was the Al-Queda connection, and number three was to bring democracy to iraq.

Now, if me, myself, stupid li'l ole Sara Gran knew that there were no WMDs and no link to Al Queda, I think we can safely assume that one of the most connected people in american politics, our beloved Francis and his friends, knew that as well. So, you know, go fuck yourself, buddy. How stupid does this guy think we are? It's so insulting to see him on TV, pretending he was duped along with the rest of us (and to see Stewart eating it up, by the way). This guy didn't learn anything new over the past four years, as he claims. His team failed, and now he's switching teams, and pretending he was never on the losing team.

Here's what I believe, and have always believed. I don't agree that we went to Iraq only for the oil, although I'm sure that was a large reason to start there. I think these neo-con folks want to take over the world. I'm serious here; I think these people made up a myriad of bullshit reasons to invade Iraq which they can now safely distance themselves from. I think they genuinely believed that we would win, in which case they would move on to the next country, Iran or whatever. They forgot that the rest of the world doesn't want to be taken over by us, and people will fight much harder for a cause they believe in than one they don't even understand. If they had won, and successfully taken over Iraq, than I think they would revealed, little by little, their real plan, which is (or was) to take over the world. The reason to start with Iraq in my opinion was for the showiness of it, first, and the fact that we could work up some good bullshit around it, second, and of course the oil as well. I think these people are akin to a cult, in that they genuinely believe they are somehow "chosen" or favored by God to rule the world, and have abandonded rational thought in order to pursue goals in accordance with their beliefs.

What really made me upset was to see Francis laughing on TV about the silly mistakes he'd made. It's okay for him to laugh. He's still alive, unlike many thousands of others, who he helped to kill. They're not really laughing so hard. Becasue they're dead. And he's whooping it up on John Stewart.

The observant reader will notice that I now have links, over there, to your right. No, THERE. These links are for the enjoyment of both you, the reader, and I, the author, or perhaps in this case list-of-links assembler. I have tried, as I always try, to amuse and delight, perhaps even thrill and amaze you, the reader, with these links. More links will be link-ed, so please continue to enjoy the new, as-yet-nonexistant links in the future.

Speaking of links, my friends Duane Sweir-you-try-to-spell-it and the more-easily-typed Tribe have excellent pieces on a journal called Professer Barnhardt's Journal. By the way "Professor," I'd like to know exactly where you got that degree and what field you're a "Professer" in, kind sir, if I may be so bold.

And in further link-news I've decided that David Thayer has the single best blog on the internet, not just becasue he writes about me often but because he always, always makes me laugh, even when I have no fucking idea what he's talking about. In fact, that's his topic for today.

I was just reading my comments from the last few days here: someone chimed in on the mayoral elections the comment that candidates are using fear to try to get elected, in this case, fear of crime. Unfortunately, I think this is happening on a national scale as well. It never fails to amaze me how people are scared of all the wrong things, and approach them in the wrong way. Crime is a good example of this. Middle-class people in new orleans are fairly well terrified of crime. Generally speaking, poor people are much more likely to be the victims of crime than more-money-ed people, but, somehow they manage to go about their every-day business without the fear of it dominating their lives. Not so us middle-class folks. I think this is to a large degree a guilt reaction; we know we were fucking lucky to be born with, if not a silver spoon, at least a spoon, and further, we're all well aware that we're not really doing enough to address the inequalities around us. Politicians exploit this fear for all it's worth; so do people who sell home-alarm systems (those do a lot of good in a city with constant power outages), guns (which are far more likely to be used against the gun-owner than anyone else), etc.

And yet, even with this constant fear, a lot of people fail to take common-sense precautions like putting bars on ground-floor windows. And more than one of my neighbors has told me that they would shoot to kill someone who broke in their house. I've been robbed before, I've been mugged before, and I've come fairly close to being raped a number of times; this is in addition to miscilleneus crimes like being stalked, threatened, fights, etc (none of these were especially violent crimes, thankfully). I don't have a gun. When the house across the street was robbed a few weeks ago, their gun was among the items stolen. That gun did not help them too much. Further, I don't think shooting is an appropriate reaction to theft. If your life is threatened, sure, go for it. But the odds of a robbery ending with murder are, despite what you see on TV, very small. By having a gun handy you only increase your own odds of getting hurt. The laws in the south are in favor of the person who's being robbed; that doesn't make it morally acceptable to kill someone who's after your TV. I have bars on my windows. I am fanatical about locking my doors. I am very careful when I come home at night. If I find myself in a questionable situation, I try to confront the person who's making me uncomfortable, to say hello and get grounded as to where I am and what's going on. I've read books about personal safety. Of course, I'm still vulnerable, and the last thing I want to do is jinx myself here, but I believe these things protect me far more than a gun ever would. I think these people who are so proud of their guns are dealing with their psychological issues in all the wrong places. Truly, in my heart of hearts, I wonder if they don't want to kill somebody, or want to be killed by somebody. I just can't wrap my head around it. Further, I think there's a whole lot of racial issues wrapped up in here, but again, I just can't quite tease them all out. Maybe you can.

I was going to get into terrorism but I'll save that for tomorrow. Meanwhile, there's a really brilliant book on crime, safety, and psychology that I would recommend to absolutely everyone, especially you writers: The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. Don't be turned off because it's an oprah pick. It's an absolutely brilliant book.

JFK Murder Solved! Free book awarded! News at Eleven!

If you'll remember, we here at sara gran's blog, we, of course, meaning me, had a contest to win a free copy of my new book come closer, which you should buy. Unless you are Uncle Ray, from Cleveland, becasue than you have won the contest with the following brilliant answer:

Don Knotts shot JFK. The little prick's dead now, and you're the first one who asked. I mean, you can imagine the Barney Fife complex, right? Right? So we're down there on the grassy knoll and he's doing his fucking Barney for these two Cuban guys and holy shit, the motherfucking gun goes off. He carried that fucking thing everywhere. That one goddamn bullet he was allowed to carry, you know? Don was such a goddamn horndog, man. We're out all night at Jack Ruby's joint (fuck, where else, right?) and Don's gettin' no grindin' from the gals and I have to watch this. Christ. You can't just BUY champagne with the girls, you have to DRINK the shit, too. So I'm all pukey out there in the sun with a piece of broken glass hammered into my temple and Don's cranky but when the fuck hasn't an actor wanted attention? The Cubans recognize him and he goes into his schtick and I guess it is anunderstatement to say the rest is history. The Cubans about shit on themselves. I wish I spoke Spanish. It was a brief but heated exchange and then they split to a car that was waiting for them. They both had umbrellas. Don was bummed. He'd told the girls JFK wanted to meet him. He swore there were other shots and I heard them, too. I didn't think we had to worry about the Cubans. Hope this helps.
-Uncle Ray

If you want to learn more about Uncle Ray, aka Ray Hadlock, visit his website. This guys is obviously pretty fucking hysterical and I highly encourage you to check it out.

And a special honorable mention goes to Tribe, who wrote in with ...

Aristotle Onassis.

One would assume this was based on Aristotle's undying love for Jackie, unless Tribe wants to elucidate us further on this.

I don't know about you folks, but as far as I'm concerned, it's all wrapped up: Don Knotts and Aristotle Onassis working hand in hand to bring down a democratically elected leader. Nice, Mr. Furley, very nice. As a side note, both of our winners live in the Buckeye State, aka the Custard State, due to its proliferation of custard shops. See you guys down on Coventry sometime soon--we'll get custard!

The mayoral race here is heating up and turning psycho. The candidates are incumbent Nagin and old-school leuteninant governor Landrieu. As far as I can tell neither of them has addressed, in more than a cursory fashion, any of what to my mind are the most important problems facing New Orleans, which are:

1. Getting all of our evacuees back home. We're talking about, maybe, a third of the city here--no small potatoes. Thousands of poor evacuees are still stranded wherever they evacuated to. Their homes were either lost or damaged beyond what they can afford to fix, or they were residents of housing projects that have not re-opened. Because a disproportionate number of damaged housing was low-income housing, and because rents have risen due to the housing shortage in already-somewhat-pricey neighborhoods like mine, these people can't come back. Even if no one cares about the human-rights issue here--and apparently, no one does--these people include many of our workers, our musicians, our entertainers, our small-business owners. Economically, we need these people back, even if, sadly, we feel no moral obligation to our fellow human beings.

2. Crime. I know I've talked about this before, but this month is bad for crime. Both candidates are talking about police solutions, when they're talking about it at all. The police are needed and appreciated, but that's a short term solution. We need a long term solution, which leads our next issue...

3. Poverty. The recovery effort could be a huge boom for the local economy. Not so much. Most of the money is going to out-of-towners, because the people here (and the people still in exile, see above), had their own problems to deal with and weren't able to get their act together in time to profit from all the construction going on here. Now the market is more or less dominated by out-of-state contractors and out-of-state work crews. Georgia, Texas, Mexico, whatever--I don't much care where these people are from, and I don't have anything against them, but the poor people of Louisiana have waited a long time for an opportunity like this, they need the money, and they should be getting the lion's share of the profit. We were given the option to finally address the very real poverty in this state, and we're blowing it. A lot of kids who are shooting each other over tiny little crack-selling turfs could probably make more money, legally and safely, working unionized construction jobs, but they're being cut out of the equation all together by contractors who prefer to work with illegal immigrants, for the obvious reason that they're easier to exploit.

This is what people are talking about instead: Landreiu keeps criticizing Nagin because he cursed a lot during those four days of hell after the hurricane. No one else in the city seems to have a problem with this. And everyone I talk to is concerned about the fact the Landreiu was going to run for governor, but changed his mind and is aiming for mayor instead. I have no idea why anyone has a problem with this. It makes no sense to me at all, but a lot people are deeply disturbed by this.

The whole thing is, to put it mildly, disappointing.