Thomas Wictor

I got a friend request. When I clicked the avatar, Facebook told me that the person doesn’t exist. Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Everything’s off kilter. It’s called a “preference cascade.” The global preference right now is for insanity. That’s fine. I’ll watch from afar, emotionally speaking.

Christ, I wish I could watch from afar physically, like from the Horsehead Nebula.

Oh well. When you’ve all recovered your senses, we’ll throw a giant party.

A guy on Goodreads sent me a friend request. I accepted, and he replied with a very grateful response. Groveling, actually. I asked if he would accept free copies of Chasing the Last Whale and Hallucinabulia, and if he liked them, maybe he could leave Amazon reviews. He responded that he couldn’t accept the books because he couldn’t promise them he’d actually read them.

Okay, fine. People have lives. They’re busy.

Since then, once a week, I get updates from him on the books he wants to read.

He always sends me four hundred ninety-nine titles. So far I’ve gotten a total of over five thousand books.

This week’s choices are spicy.

His avatar shows a very heavy man in his sixties. I didn’t include all four hundred ninety-nine books from this update. They all shared the same general theme except for the ten titles at the bottom of this screen grab.

If I told you what Tim and I did yesterday, you’d be marveling at my self-control. It’s really not that at all. I just don’t expect any form of normality from anybody anymore. It’s quite liberating, and when people turn out to not be deranged, it’s a pleasant surprise, like a chocolate mint left on your hotel pillow.

Someone also sent me this today.

That’s an “unbelievable” name? I live in California. I’ve seen the name “Larvae.” My sister was a docent at a children’s museum; one of the children was named “Oleo Margarine.” And there was a person in the Los Angeles phone book named “Lo Hung Twat.”

But who cares about that woman’s name? She was arrested for shooting a missile into an occupied car! Do Floridians now have access to MANPADS? Shouldn’t that be more worthy of commentary than her stupid name?

If a guy named Man Pad were arrested for shooting a missile into an occupied car, I’d agree that his monicker was unbelievable.

When I was pretend-represented by the crook Mike Albee, he sold my e-mail address to a book publicity firm that now spams me incessantly.

Look, I know better than most authors how important it is to get publicity. The best writing I ever did was starved of publicity due to Mike Albee’s fraudulence. It therefore died, and nobody on the planet except for my brother Tim and a handful of other people cares. My attempts to publicize Mike Albee’s crime were completely ignored by the publishing industry, law enforcement, and every single media outlet except for one radio show in Washington. D.C.

But if you think paying $25 is going to do a thing for you, I’m speechless. You’d be better off sticking your head out your front door and shouting the title of your book. Even the $99 Bronze Publicity Package isn’t going to do anything.

That’s an awesome author photo, though, Suz. Does that rhyme with “fuzz”? Desire in Tartan, eh? The only definition of tartan I know is the pattern used on kilts. Scottish kilts.

Ah! The massive caber. Of course.

This was on my Facebook news feed today.

Well, I’m kind of in absolute, violent disagreement about the “wisdom” part. Birth defects, for example, are pretty much out of our control. Being run over by a drunk driver who leaves you a quadriplegic isn’t something you made for yourself. The first time I heard “There are no victims, only volunteers!” I shot the person dead. After all, she’d volunteered.

No, I’ve never shot anybody.

I only beat her unconscious.

And now I have an insect bite on my arm that keeps going away and then coming back.

You can see a hole in the center, where the little bastard stuck in his beak or mandibles or proboscis. Or maybe he used a tiny knife. The bite goes flat and turns flesh colored, and then it gets red and swells up again. It itches like crazy.

In twelve hours I lose my doctor of ten years due to Obamacare. My doctor doesn’t want to retire and feels that he’s abandoning his patients, but the new arbitrary rules make it impossible for him to continue. I’ve been called a member of the KKK for complaining about losing my doctor.

See, Obamacare was supposed to improve all our lives, but when I point out that it was a lie, people react with rage. Toward me. I can’t imagine being so personally devoted to a stranger that you’d willingly sacrifice your health care rather than admit that he lied—and quite blatantly—to you.

What would be fun would be to tell you the things I’m having to admit to myself, and not about strangers. That’s why I just laugh at you race baiters. You’re so cute and innocent. If I sat you down for a chat, I could have you screaming to be hospitalized in five minutes.

Instead, listen to one of the greatest pop songs ever written.

Nothing was the same again
All about where and when
Blowing our minds in a life unkind
You gotta love the BPM

When his work was all but done
Remembering how this begun
We wore his love like a hand in a glove
There’s a preacher plays it all night long