Wow. If you can’t afford a free site…

As most of you know, it’s free to publish on Lulu, and as a result our audience of creators is generally made up of those unwilling (or unable) to fork over hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for alternative self-publishing offerings.

So imagine my surprise when I received this email today:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Attached to this email is my peoms and lyrics. Please help me published my book of peoms and lyrics. I have a small little problem I don”t have any money to pay for the publishing of this book and I don’t have a credit card/visa/master card or american express.
What you can do is help me publish my book and when I start to earn money when you start selling my book you can deduct the money from my earnings.

Yours respectively,

I’m not sure where to go with this, although I’m tempted to set up an account and publish their content for them. You never know…

State of Fear, or confusion?

It seems that I have a harder time making it through fiction novels as I get older. The same ol’ stories can only be presented in only so many ways it seems, and as I, err, acquire more experience in plot management techniques I have less tolerance for repeatedly traveling down the same fictional highway. At least that’s the excuse I’m using as to why my list of readable authors is getting shorter every year.

One book I thought I’d pick up from the local library was Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. I somewhat enjoyed Prey and Next, and had read a review that this book at least mixed in some interesting, yet controversial, facts about global warming.

One of the early “mis-truths” brought to light in State of Fear is that Antartica’s glaciers are being reduced in size. Mr. Crichton educates us with a different side of the story, pointing out that only a particular edge of the Antartic shelf is falling into the ocean–while the rest of the continentof ice is actually growing in size, and Mauna Loa and Law Dome ice cores show little, if any, temperature change over the last hundred and fifty years.

But something warm is happening down there. I read on Drudge that a new major iceberg about 8 miles wide and 15 miles long broke free of the Fimbul Ice Shelf just this week. A quick search on Drudge shows a history of these things happening–in addition to stories like “East Antarctica Puts on Weight.” So something cold is happening too.

Now I really am confused. But thanks, Michael–I’ll give this subject another look. Whether I’ll finish your book…

President Bush at last night’s Broadcasters’ Dinner

You’ve got to hand it to our man Mr. Bush. Even in the worst of times he’s able to joke around–although that behavior is expected from our presidents at the annual Broadcasters’ Dinner (and yes, even in the worst of times).

Like his response to:

Tell us, Mr. President, how have things changed since the last Broadcasters’ Dinner?

“A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone,” President Bush said Wednesday night during the annual gathering.

“Ah,” he said, “those were the good ol’ days.”

Or, on a more timely note regarding the controvery over the Justice Department’s firing of eight federal prosecutors, Bush said: “I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you’ve lost it when people sympathize with lawyers.”

Obviously he’s not writing this stuff, but he’s delivering it well. And, in a time where he’s not impressing most of the country with his leadership, he is impressing me, at least, with his humor.

It’s fun to be here, finally.

Hey, it’s great to have a new blog happenin’. I’m still posting over at Lulu as usual, but I thought that a non-Lulu blog might be more web and search-friendly–it’s no surprise that our blog functionality (still) leaves much to be desired. But hey, we’re working on fixing that along with the addition of many new cool 2007 features.