Promotional Item

I don't plug a lot of things (giggity), but when I do, I bloody well mean it, so listen up:  Don Winslow is an outstanding author and a great American. There are worse ways to learn about American drug and foreign policies over the last forty years than to read Winslow's Cartel trilogy (Power of the Dog; The Cartel; The Border). His other stuff's excellent, too.

Anyhoo, Winslow has been making anti-Trump videos lately, similar to what you've seen and heard from The Lincoln Project and Meidas Touch. He's doing this out of pocket, and is not asking for any donations or funding. All he's asking is for the word to be spread far and wide, so check it out.

And maybe do yourself a favor and buy one of his books as well.

Paging Noel Casler

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Spreading the Word

If you're able, give Jurassic Pork a helping hand this holiday season.

In Logo Parentis

You may have seen the logo for the just-finished Republican National Convention, featuring an elephant trumpeting along the neck of a guitar (although the wise bet would be that the most popular musical instrument in that arena is the accordion), like so:

Of the four nights, I don't think I watched more than ten minutes per night, with the exception of Hair Fuhrer's dirge last night. I can't sit and watch these things, and don't plan to watch more than the bare minimum of the DNC next week either -- like the State of the Union, it's easier to just read the high points later, than to try to keep up between spontaneous chanting and eruptions of applause. I hate that shit.

But after all the reading, and the consistent pattern of "flaming hellscape" rhetoric, culminating in Deadbeat Donald's jeremiad of cherry-picked nonsense, the conclusion is inescapable that a more appropriate logo would have been to have the elephant with a gun in its mouth, ready to splatter its brains out the back of its head.

Who knows, if I get bored enough this coming week (we have a ten-day heat wave hitting the NorCal area, starting tomorrow), I may fire up GIMP and do some graphics work, maybe put up a bumper sticker or button on CafePress. I've been thinking about doing a fundraiser, but I don't want donations, I want to create something that will give people something fun, something to talk about and share with others.

I have some other ideas in this area that will be coming out very soon, as this campaign season really gets rolling. Life hands you this much stupid, might as well make some stupid-ade. Stay tuned.

Putting the "Fun" in "Fundraising"

If you have a few shekels to spare this tax season, you should throw some at Jim Wright. He's been knocking some solid stuff for quite some time, and appears to make a hell of an artisanal birch salad bowl. You could also donate to Strix's efforts (though I don't see a PayPal link, so maybe not. Or Ed. Or any number of fine folks.

If you want to contribute to my random rambunctions and profane ruminations, the best way is actually to purchase something through my Amazon store pages (upper right sidebar).

All of this is strictly voluntary, of course. I think we all write because we have no other choice. This is how we all deal with the craziness of our times. If any of us were in it for "the money" we'd be fighting for space on a very crowded sidewalk.

It's just beer money. But it's good to know you're out there, that we're not just pissing in the wind. If you can't afford to give money, then just give a shout-out in comments.

Boat People

Hey folks, if you've got a few shekels to spare, go help out Dmitry Orlov, who needs a new boat engine to continue his spare, peripatetic lifestyle.

Free Downloads Tuesday

Folks, if you want to show some support for our humble efforts here, and not spend any of your hard-earned cash in the process, do me a solid and grab yourself some free downloads this Tuesday, April 1. All four Hammer e-books for Kindle will be available for free download, as will all six Purple Tiger Guitar books (available on the AStore page in the upper right sidebar).

So take a second, drop in and grab some free reading material, leave a review if you're inclined, spread the word, yada yada. As always, your participation and support are appreciated.

[Update 4/1/14 11:15 PDT: Well, that was something. I suppose I could and should do some statistical analysis on this phenomenon, perhaps later in the year with a larger sample size. But today's little free download experiment ran the gamut from sublime to ridiculous -- the 5 main PTG books (the 6th book is actually a 99-cent sampler of one of the other 5) were downloaded over 2,000 times each, with Practice Power going over the 3,000 mark. (To give you an idea, generally a free download day will result in a given book being downloaded roughly 100-120 times that day, around 150 or so on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.) The grand total was just a shade under 12,000 books for the day. Pretty fucking cool.

At the other end of the spectrum, none of the four Hammer books (admittedly, they are dated even before they are published, in terms of content and even titles) even made it out of double digits. There was a time when I would have taken it personally and gotten butt-hurt about it, but frankly, as the two or three people who have checked out Lucky '13 found out if they read far enough into it, this blog will probably close up shop at the end of 2014. There are multiple reasons for this, many of which I've gone over in here from time to time. But the bottom line is a combination of lack of time and lack of response -- in other words, if there were more response, I'd make more time, but as today showed, a guitar site I started less than two years ago, and post to less frequently than I have here for nearly a full decade now, just moved about 200 times as much product. For free.

When you can't even give it away anymore, maybe that's a sign. Maybe I should have put stories and photos of my pets in the Hammer books. We'll touch a bit more in depth on this particular dynamic down the road at some point. I am still hoping to close out strong with three final Hammer books -- an Assholes of 2014 shorty, a 2014 essay compilation (with new intros), and a huge retrospective encompassing the entire decade of the Hammer's run (I'd really like to throw some of the comment dialogues into that last one, one thing that has made this blog stand out over many others is the quality of so many of the regular commenters here). We'll see how the rest of this year goes, but whatever of those I actually do, I will be promoting early and often.

Lucky 13

Been sidetracked with a metric fuckton of work and family issues lately, but the promised 2013 retrospective, Lucky '13, really is just about done. I'm shooting for this weekend, we'll see if it actually happens. It will launch with several free days of downloads. Holla in comments if you give half a fuck.

Weekend Pimpology

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for the compendium of 2013 posts, Lucky '13, to hit the Kindle Book store, and it will, definitely within the next week. Only so many hours in the day, and for some reason I continue to show up at my day job, even though I'm now getting cornholed on the health insurance I don't even use. Another $200/month I don't have, for something I don't use. Yes, this is certainly "reform" that will make my future life on a fucking sidewalk so much better. Awesome. Remind me again why I voted for this fucking guy, and how much worse the other guy would have been.


Anyhoo, until that magickal day when you can pick up Lucky '13 (which will kick off with a free download weekend), you can always grab the 2013 list of assholes, Baker's Dozen, for just 99 cents. If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow it for free (and I still get paid).


Thanks for your support. Party on.

Free Download

Here's your assignment, Hammerheads -- go grab my new mini-book, Baker's Dozen, free for the next 72 hours. Give it a quick read, drop a review on the Amazon page, tell a friend or a forum thread of like-minded individuals. This will take you all of 15-20 minutes total, won't cost you a dime, and you'll be doing a good deed.

Thanks for your support. Stay tuned -- next weekend I'll be pestering you to do the same things for the launch of our collection of posts from last year, Lucky '13.

Health Care, Housekeeping, Cyber-panhandling, Notes and Errata

Here's something fun:  for my first paycheck this year, I got a nice surprise -- every two weeks now, I get about a hundred bucks more deducted for my basement-level health plan. Happy New Year, right? Considering I not only have decent health insurance, but am a member of a manager-level public-sector union, I can just imagine what others are dealing with.

 

The easy snark would be to drop some #thanksobamacare smackdown, but of course there's more to it than that. You'd think with a variety of corporate-owned media entities jabbering 24-7-365, someone would step up and talk about what "Obamacare" really is. But it doesn't seem like they have.

 

So let's be more clear about this, since the media (and indeed Obama himself) have failed to do so -- what we call "Obamacare" is really an amalgamclusterfuck of industry-written regulations, mandating health care not so much to insure people who can't get insurance, but to ensure that when indigent people visit the ER and skip out on their tab, someone (that's you 'n' me, bunky) covers the tab.

 

So I'm well aware of what I'm being forced to pay for now, something I rarely if ever use. If it wasn't this, it'd be something else -- the hallmark of bureaucracies in general and post-industrial societies in particular is that, since you have more people with less to do, but everyone needs to look like they're doing something, what remains of the American middle class has to get used having someone's fucking hand in their pocket at every turn.

 

Can't ask the .1%ers to pay a little extra taxes, since they're job creators, right? (Just not here.) And by definition you can't ask the indigent and unskilled to pay for it, since they're barely eking their way through life. (And yet, there are people who earn a better living than I do, advocating for the rights of the disenfranchised. Awesome. Where do I get one of those folks to advocate for me being nickel-and-dimed to death?)

 

But I don't have an extra $200 a month to throw at bullshit either. I drive a 20-year-old car to work. Already I'm going to spend the rest of my life paying down interest on $200 textbooks, for a degree that should have come in two-ply. And now this, so that some bloodsucker can optimize their fucking stock portfolio on everyone else's back.

 

Anyway, I don't really care to hit folks up for money, because I know things are tough all over. But here are a few ways you can help a brutha out, with very little (or no) money and time:

 

1. Check out our sponsors. Whether or not you buy anything, it helps.
2. If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow any of my books for Kindle from Amazon for free, and I still get a royalty.
3. Spread the word. Nothing is more valuable than word of mouth.
4. My political books are all lower than $2.99 in price, so if you want to buy one, they're really not that costly, and never will be.
5. If you play guitar, or would like to learn, check out my Amazon Store at the top of the right sidebar. If you buy through that portal, I get the royalty and the sales commission. Most of the guitar books are $2.99 or lower, though a couple of the longer ones are $3.99, and they all have enough material to keep just about anyone busy for months.

 

The new Hammer book, Baker's Dozen, is available for download, only 99 cents. Starting Sunday, the book will be available for free for 72 hours. It's the Assholes of 2013 list, essentially. Grab a copy for free, take 30 seconds and write a review, and tell a friend at one of the kewl-kid blogs. Easy enough, doesn't cost you a dime, and you're out maybe 15 minutes of your day.


I had hoped to release the 2013 collection, Lucky '13, at the same time, but due to a multitude of other commitments and projects, I'm still working on formatting and cover design. Should be ready to drop next weekend; considering I didn't get Mockalypse and 12 in '12 out until April, I can live with mid-January for these new ones.

 

As always, thanks for your support.

Please Donate

The good folks over at Balloon Juice have a fund going for this viciously abused dog. Give if you can, it's a damned fine cause.

Too bad they don't know who did it, because it would be worth chipping in another few bucks to eliminate the scum who torture pets for fun. The future gene pool will thank us. May everything they do to animals be revisited a thousand times upon them.

In Other News

I have a couple of projects that I've been working on, that I may decide to do some self-publishing through Amazon's DIY Kindle program. So I have a few questions for all of you (okay, both of you) out there. Have any of you had experience with that program? If so, what was the outcome? Are there any issues with setup, publishing, etc. that I should consider going in?

Mind you, I am not looking at this as some life-changing career move, and no, I am not feverishly cranking out some basement rendition of the Twilight/Game of Thrones canon. But I do have some ideas that I think some might find useful and/or entertaining, and wouldn't mind pulling a modest supplemental income from, if possible.

Anyway, if you've tried the Kindle program, or something similar, and have some observations to share, please add in comments below, or email the Gmail. Thanks.