Remember, every time you laugh a terrorist starts itching in a place they can’t reach. Make the terrorists itchy: Buy a funny book.
http://markrhunter.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Slightly-off-Mark-Unpublished-Columns/dp/1508989419
Stuff About Junk, or: Clamoring About Clutter
I’m going to go out and do fun
spring stuff for a while!
Okay, not really. But my daughter
has delayed her garage sale until Kendallville’s city-wide sale, May 22-24, so
I’m going to take the opportunity to go through the whole house for anything
decent enough to sell that I haven’t touched in recent years. If it’s not
decent—trash. There’s a lot of it. (My new books will also be for sale at her
sale—not quite a book signing, as I’ll only be there part of the time.)
Going through so much stuff confirmed
what I already knew: I have too much stuff. Isn’t that something? I live in a
house that was built originally with very little storage space, because back
then extra stuff was just not that important. Today people rent storage units,
because they’ve got too much stuff they never use. It’s kind of silly.
So, I have pledged to get rid of a
lot of my stuff. I’m un-junking, de-hoarding, messing with my mess, Avengers
de-assembling. (Oh, and I’m going to see The
Avengers, too.) I’m even getting rid of some of my books. No, really. I’ll
cry a little, but I’ll get over it.
Fifty Authors from Fifty States: About Louisiana Boy, Todd~Michael St. Pierre
Fifty Authors from Fifty States: About Louisiana Boy, Todd~Michael St. Pierre: Louisiana Pride She is a Lady; Her Treasures I’ve seen… Steamboats and Bonfires and Creole Cuisine! Strawberries and Seafood, Sugarca...
Print books are in. With words, and everything!
The print run of Slightly Off the Mark: The Unpublished Columns is here, but we
could run out quickly! (Not really, we’ll just order more.)
You can get a signed copy on my website at http://www.markrhunter.com/ using
PayPal, or do that whole credit card thing. Or, you can get a print copy on Amazon
and pair it with the Kindle version at half price. Or, just shoot me a line and
we’ll make arrangements.
On that same website page, sign up for our mailing
list and get notifications, information, humor, and stuff. (Stuff to be
announced.) I’ll endeavor to be entertaining.
Needless to say, order any of my other books there,
too! I’m not all about the funny. Some people feel very strongly about that.
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| It still looks like this. |
The Official Announcement, Now That You Already Know
This is what I was going to post to get the ball
rolling on the release of Slightly Off
the Mark: The Unpublished Columns (which are now the published columns). But now it’s up
on Amazon, and on the website, and … we just got our delivery of print copies!
“I
turned around a few minutes later, walked into the Albion New Era office with
the aura of confidence and skill, and said ‘I changed my mind.
Pleasssseeeee!!!!!!’”
--Slightly Off
the Mark, from “Why I write, or: I hate needles”.
Thus began my career as a humor columnist, which
resulted in some 1,150,000 words over the next quarter of a century. Now, although my column has moved to the
monthly Kendallville Mall, I’ve collected all my unpublished earlier columns
into one volume.
Because “volume” sounds somehow more official than
“book”.
It’s a short book, but my fourteen regular readers
have short attention spans, so it’s all good. Now I’m asking you, my other
hundred or so readers, to purchase Slightly
off the Mark and then actually read it, and then tell all their friends.
It’s a lot to ask, but I have no shame.
You can find links to all the ways you can get the Slightly Off the Mark on my website, www.markrhunter.com,
or at regular internet places, and soon I hope to have news on such
things as book signings and other places where you can get a copy. Or, knock on
my door, or stop me in the street. Not in the middle of the street … maybe wait
for me on the sidewalk.
To show you what you’ll be treated to—I hope that’s
the right word—the book is divided into sections including:
Part
One: because someone has to go first
Part
Deux: the final second
Part
Three: medical stuff, and things
Part
Four: the writer’s life for me, or: Brother, can you spare a dime?
Part
Five: how do you spell miscellaneous?
Part
Six: part two of the writer’s life, or: Six into two makes … something
Part
Seven: politics, or: Maybe you shouldn’t read this section—(my editor didn’t)
Part
Eight: What’s the sundry word for miscellaneous?
If that’s not enough for you to part with your Starbucks
money, at the end of the book you’ll find the first chapter of my upcoming
space opera novel, Beowulf: In Harm’s Way.
There’s humor there, too. Really, there is. I would recommend you pay particular
attention to that part if you’re, say, a publisher, or an agent.
Hope you like it!
Bites, and Sniffles, and Other Joys of Spring
Spring makes me giddy, dizzy, my
heart skips—or possibly, it’s my allergies.
There’s no such thing as the
perfect time of the year. Having said that, a bad day in summer is better than
a good day in winter, and if you don’t believe me, ask a meteorologist. Do you
know that of all assaults on forecasters, 95% happen during winter? This year,
Boston weathermen had to go into the witness protection program.
The other 5% happen during heat
waves, which proves my earlier point.
In spring, exhausted sprouts poke
through the slush, and hungry deer stop shivering for the first time since
November. Those who weren’t hit by cars, I mean. People love flowers, and deer—that
aren’t in their driving path. People don’t love mosquitos, but they also come
out every spring. Deer don’t love mosquitos. Nobody loves mosquitos. Other
mosquitos, I suppose.
Yet there they are, and I’d rather
be bitten by fifty mosquitos than experience the definition of “wind chill
factor”. It’s a comparative thing, but it’s not apples and oranges: It’s liver
and Brussels sprouts. I’d rather eat fifty Brussels sprouts than one piece of
liver, but that doesn’t mean I like them.
During a trip to Missouri, I
discovered after about a dozen bites that I was allergic to their mosquitos,
which are just like ours but talk like Mark Twain. As I lay there suffering, I
thought: “Hey … I’m not cold!” Granted, I was running a 101 degree fever at the
time, but still.
I got tested a few years ago, and
found out I was allergic to every substance humans can be allergic to. (Except
foods. I have no explanation.) That would seem to make summer a bad thing,
because that’s when the allergens come out.
Coming into contact with many things causes a severe reaction: Bugs,
mold, dust, bikini ladies …
Well, my wife said I’d suffer if I
came into contact with bikini ladies, so that pretty much qualifies as an
allergy.
But it turns out I’m also allergic
to winter. I’d always said that, but now I have medical proof: the diagnosis of
Seasonal Affected Disorder, which means the short, cold days of winter make me
feel lousy. This has probably been a problem from the first time humans
ventured north to cross the land bridge into America:
“I just don’t feel like getting out
from under the bearskin.”
“Ogg, you have mastodons to hunt
and cave drawings to—draw. Now, get out there or it will get glacial in here!”
At least they didn’t have to do
spring cleaning for another 30,000 years.
Another complaint about warm
weather is, of course, that it gets too warm. “You can put on clothes when it’s
cold,” people say, “but you can’t take off clothes when it’s too hot.”
What, you’ve never heard of nudist
colonies? No one has ever frozen to death at a nudist colony, yet many people
wearing layers upon layers have frozen to death in winter. At the same time,
many people have been known to suffer heat related injuries in December … although
I’ll grant you most of those people were in Australia.
Then there are tornadoes. Although
twisters can happen any time of the year, in northern Indiana they’re most
common while you’re grilling at the picnic, rather than shoveling snow. Can you
imagine the drifts? That should be the next Syfy original movie: “Snow
Tornado”, staring Pauly Shore and Shannen Doherty. “Watch as Corey Feldman’s
frozen body gets sucked into an ice funnel!” I’d watch it.
But again, no one has ever frozen
to death during a tornado. In fact, the average tornado is around five hundred
feet across and on the ground for five miles, while the average snowstorm named
by The Weather Channel lasts three weeks and affects 93 million people in
nineteen states, and hits Boston twice.
Also, tornadoes give some relief in
heat waves. According to my calculations, on a 90 degree day a three hundred
mile an hour wind produces a wind chill factor of 64.2 degrees. That’s close to
perfect. Granted, there will be issues with holding down your picnic, but I’ll
bet no ants show up.
In short, I wasn’t crazy when I got
in my car the other day and gave a happy cheer at becoming uncomfortable warm before I turned the heater on. I love
Indiana two-thirds of the time. Insect bites, heat exhaustion, and
uncontrollable sneezing are just part of the charm.
If you
don’t believe me, ask the guy who slipped on the ice last January, got buried
in a snow drift, and couldn’t reach his phone because it was under five layers
of clothes. I mean, if you can find him.
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Me last year, with flowers ... and
sneezing. And if you look carefully, you can see a mosquito. But I'm still
happy.
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