Been meaning to pimp this site for a while now. Hours of entertaining book summaries ahead that will save you countless days you could actually spend reading instead. Now you can laugh instead of read. That’s the future of English, right Professor Wilson?

But seriously, it’s a really cool site. And will probably promote at least as much interest in reading as it short-circuits it.

Last night I frequented a local theater production of Slaughterhouse Five featuring the surprisingly versatile Lily Vonnegut.

I’m don’t fancy myself as much of a theater reviewer, but the performance deeply affected me, as I relived some of the more poignant moments of such a formative work. Suffice to say that both A.J. Diamond and Don Sclossman effortlessly captured the perplexed, unstuck in time, Billy Pilgrim. Schlossman, who is a dead ringer for the love child of Darrell Hammond and Glenn Beck, is clearly destined to take the roll of Beck in a future Christopher Guest mockumentary.

This was not an easy piece to take to stage, given the non-linear plot line, forcing the players to quickly shift between a 60s barbershop quartet and German soldiers torturing a group of POWs. Every actor had two to three parts to play at minimum. It was especially pleasing to watch Gretchen Koerner prattle on about an engagement gift as Valencia, and subsequently return to the stage as a barking, German staff sergeant. Even the Tralfamadorians (Vonnegut’s plunger-shaped aliens) were given a surprising amount of depth.

It had been several years since I had read though the book, and in the reproduction, I was struck at how keen and incredibly relevant is Vonnegut’s critique of American hegemony.

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves…. It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”

For all the now en vogue criticisms of banking cartels and financial terrorists, Vonnegut had our society’s fate absolutely pegged 40 years ago. He recognized that despite the shifts in party politics, and despite pop-culture and counter-culture movements, America has been on an unwavering march towards an Oligarchic State. The seeds were planted during the Industrial Revolution, and we have not veered from that path since.

I was especially pleased to see those critical philosophical excerpts featured in the theater piece. It seemed, at times, that the chic Los Angeles audience attending had absolutely no idea what to do with Vonnegut’s prescient progressive soliloquies. All the more reason that they were necessary to include. This culture needs a heaping dose of Vonnegut horse-sense, more than ever.

On a personal note, it meant a great deal to have met Lily, who found the Meppers via our Vonnegut video. I only wish that Storey could have been there, as well. The evening was a welcome reminder that your work can affect people that you least expect, if you’re willing to give of your inner self.

Night of the Living Trekkies: Book Trailer from R. Giskard Reventlov on Vimeo.

The issue of Earth’s movement along its orbit is something flux capacitor- obsessed sci-fi authors and screenwriters rarely acknowledge. Perhaps in some future sci-fi story, the author will restrict time travel to events that happened on the same calendar day as the departure, to prevent the Earth movement problem.

For more on the geographical aspects of time, see Claytonian Time.

Image Source

Take it. Take it now. Take it with reckless abandon. Take it till you get all 64 possible answers. Then tell your friends and take it again.

If you’re interested in my personality, it’s apparently aligned with Jane Eyre:

You’re Jane Eyre!
by Charlotte Bronte
Epic in scope and vision, you like looking at your own complete history. That said, your complete history is pretty much crazy. You seem to be followed by suitors, craziness, fires, and incredible turns of both good and bad fortune. Through it all, you persevere while maintaining adherence to your own somewhat middle-ground moral code. While you have confidence that everything will work out in the end, you sometimes wonder if it’s worth it along the way. Oh sweet sweet Jane.
Take the Book Quiz II at the Blue Pyramid.

Other Meppers? Mep fans? Tell us what “other” book you are…

I attended the midnight premiere of teeny-bopper sensation Twilight: New Moon, this morning. Having re-read that sentence after writing it, I am probably as baffled as you are as to why I agreed to go along with it. Suffice to say, I have a friend who is a big Twilight fan, and I didn’t want her to have to brave the crowd alone, so agreed to do a solid for her while also fulfilling a morbid curiosity to figure out what this Twilight phenomenon was all about.

And hey, I figured maybe there was an outside chance I could find something to like about Twilight. I mean, I love the song “Twilight” by ELO (which is initially what I thought the movies were a derivative of), I didn’t completely 100% loathe Underworld, another Vampire/Werewolf genre piece, and, way back in the day, I actually thoroughly enjoyed Interview with the Vampire.

Of course, I realize that the genre didn’t start with Ann Rice either, but there does seem to be a great deal more substance in these pieces as we trace them closer to their original source. The new genre of Vampire fare (including HBO’s True Blood) seem to be what happens when you make a copy of a copy of a copy. The whole thing gets incredibly fuzzy, and the quality drops off the table.

While standing in line amidst a throng of teenaged (and wistfully nostalgic honorary teenaged) girls, I asked my movie companion whether the traditional vampire rules applied to these Twilight vampires, and I learned the following:

– Twilight vampires are not harmed by garlic (heck, they are so chic they probably grow their own basil to make pesto for their vamp-dinners)

– Twilight vampires are not harmed by crosses (hard to keep up a proper goth look without them, I suppose)

– Twilight vampires are not harmed by stakes to the heart (this would piss off Van Helsing to no end)

– Twilight vampires are not harmed by the sun…

The sun? These vampires aren’t hurt by the sun? What exactly makes them vampires, again? Sure, they drink blood, but so does Billy Bob Thornton, and he ain’t no vampire either. I mean, there are quasi-precedents for this, like Blade, the Daywalker but even Blade was a huge anomaly in the vampire world, as he wasn’t 100% vampire.

You see, when Twilight vampires are exposed to the sun, they… well… they twinkle. Basically, when Twilight vampires have sun shined on them, they look like Mariah Carey. Jesus, could we soften up this monster legend any more? How about instead of fangs, the Twilight vampires have candy corn incisors, and instead of blood, they really lust after gazpacho soup.

The strange thing is, even after watching the entire movie, I learned almost nothing more about Twilight vampires that made any kind of sense at all. The movie is a perfect replication of the mind of a teenaged girl. The main character (a 17-year old girl) Bella, basically sits, and pines for her vampire boyfriend for 90% of the movie. She becomes depressed, she listens to her Ipod, she throws tantrums, she hangs out with the local neighborhood boy (the modern incarnation of Pacey), and melodramatically fakes suicide over and over in the hopes that her passive-aggressive vampire boy, Edward (Dawson), will come to save her. She sulks, she cries, she thinks about going to live with her mom, and then she goes off on a spontaneous (and random) jaunt to Italy to frolic with the tourists.

As expected, the movie was instantly forgettable — even now, details of the “plot” are rapidly falling out of my head. But, honestly, I can’t even say I disliked this movie as much as the Time Traveler’s Wife. Time Traveler’s Wife seemed harmful on several levels (in part by implanting the desire to marry abusive husbands). Twilight: New Moon is about as harmless as you can possibly get. And frankly, there are many movies from my teenage generation that mirror this plot exactly. Teenaged girl pines until she discovers a magical world of new powers and boyfriends?

Exhibit A: Teen Witch

Exhibit B: Labyrinth

Exhibit C: The male 80′s equivalent: The Lost Boys

So, yeah. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone that a money-driven sequel based on a tired genre brings absolutely nothing new to the table. What’s disturbing is that no one seems to expect any blockbuster these days to bring anything new to the table. Is it possible that our pop-culture is stuck in some kind of mobius strip of bad children fare, followed by bad teen-aged fare, followed by bad superhero blockbusters, followed by bad middle-aged life dramas? Christ, American media is depressing.

With this Wordle thing, you can take any webpage or piece of writing and have it analyzed for frequently occurring words. One cautionary note: blogs seem to rely only on the last few entries rather than a holistic summation of the whole blog, which strikes me as a real weakness. Though I guess that provides the incentive to keep redoing it every few weeks.

This is good for at least as much fun, in a more verbal Storeyesque way, as the Japanese hair machine (which was, btw, totally disappointing for me, because it didn’t sufficiently cover/replace my extant hair).

Today, Britain’s Daily Mail Online gave us a glimpse of a possible future distopian solution to unemployment.

Internet Eyes is “a worldwide online instant event notification system utilizing video feed to notify the owner of the feed (customer) that an event is occurring.”

In other words, anonymous internet viewers will be conscripted to sit at their computer and browse through hundreds of hours of surveillance video, in the hope that they can spot some unseemly activities going on, and instantly report it to a Game Warden for a cash reward.

So far, Internet Eyes is stopping short of fully employing online participants in the search for shoplifters, petty thieves, and other Dangerous Sub-Societal Malcontents. But offering monthly cash prizes for viewers who excel at catching Undesirables is a tentative first step down that path.

This new “game” seems to have a huge demographic to take advantage of. There are tens of millions of users out there, patiently waiting to find opportunities to work on the internet. And once it’s determined how lucrative searching for Bad Guys is (as compared to farming for gold on World of Warcraft, for instance), the users and gamers and unemployable masses will flock to see who can earn the most Vigilance Points.

And once this program is underway, do not count on your fellow internet users to abstain from World of Surveillance out of some moral or ethical compunction. Do you really think that the Korean factory workers who earn pennies an hour by farming items in an online video game will be any less likely to take a slight pay raise to search for Altoids tin filchers at the 7-11?

If you need any more proof that this is the direction we’re headed, look to Neal Stephenson’s prophetic work, Snow Crash,

“They [Gargoyles] serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society… The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.”

Scientists have recently discovered that mastodons once excreted what has become our canon of elite cinema. This may have prompted Mep Reporter Russ Gooberman to declare the recently-released film “The Time Traveler’s Wife” a “steaming pile of mastodon dung“.

(Here there be spoilers.)

I finally got around to seeing this film and the top paragraph is the only explicable theory I can comprehend for Russ’ opinion of “The Time Traveler’s Wife”. I know this man to be of sound mind and body, so there’s simply no other way. Allow me to deconstruct…

Since this will essentially take the form of a debate round, I will give you three affirmative reasons why “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (henceforward “TTTW”) is an excellent piece of moviemaking, worthy of your hard-randomly-rewarded-by-our-busted-system ten dollars. Then I will demonstrate the inadequacy of Russ’ points.

Argument 1: TTTW is Profoundly Clever and Original
In the history of science fiction, a genre that purports to embrace creativity and exploration of vast, unique plotlines, no great work (perhaps no work at all) has ever theorized time traveling as something which is not a choice. Let alone something which is not the result of the careful laboring of elite (or mad) scientists and the resultant construction of machinery and theories. The exploration of time traveling as a genetic predisposition, as something which is more a pain than a blessing, as something described by the protagonist at one point as “chrono-impairment”, these things alone are worth the price of a sci-fi fan’s admission. And indeed, TTTW is an exploratory movie, examining many different possibilities and scenarios with a keen eye for awkward and interesting hypotheticals.

Argument 2: TTTW Provides Mind-Blowing Elegance and Consistency
Throughout the history of time-travel books and movies, there have been inconsistencies. Things that must be overlooked. Alternate universes and dei ex machinis up the wazoo. You will not find these in TTTW. The plotline of TTTW blends fate and free will so perfectly that you have to spend hours of aftermath just checking everything out, tugging at any strand of a loose end possibility, just to make sure. And it works. It all fits. One comes to the distressing conclusion that it’s possible neither of the main characters in the book have any free will, a plot device one might think Russ would have enjoyed. Not only does this make it an extremely well-crafted accomplishment of plot-development, it prompts a stirring and unsettling contemplation for the viewer. How much free will have they exercised? Have seemingly random circumstances necessitated their current place all along?

Argument 3: TTTW is Well-Paced Drama
Aside from its beauty as a work of science fiction, TTTW is great storytelling as well, building from a somewhat confusing outset to a gradual crescendo of unease and ultimate cloudburst of dramatic impact. It is impossible (unless, I guess, one has already inexplicably given up on the movie) to not be emotionally impacted by the last third of the film. This is something I was perhaps most concerned the movie would not be able to effectively translate from the book, but I needn’t have worried. I can’t remember the last time I cried so much in a theater.

Now, to Russ’ “misconceptions” about the movie…

Russ:
Misconception 1: The Time Traveler’s Wife is a Movie.
Fact: The Time Traveler’s Wife is a highlight reel, poorly pasted together.

As you can imagine, it’s awfully hard to develop any characters or plot when the protagonists are only allowed to speak two sentences before one of them gets dumped in the middle of a bridge for no reason.

Having read the book, I do have to caveat my response here a little. The book does a better job than the movie of establishing exactly what’s going on, because it has more time to. For this reason, had I been making the movie, I would have aimed for 2.5 hours instead of the 1.5 hours and change they went for. But most people don’t like long movies as much as I do, so I can see why they went for the faster pace.

Nevertheless, Russ’ accusations are ludicrous here. I have never seen such consistency in a time travel film, as I’ve discussed – I challenge Russ to name one loose end that doesn’t wash. There is a very thorough, progressive narrative, though it is certainly even more fractured than one’s standard fractured narrative. This is admittedly a device that requires effort on the part of the viewer and gives the viewer credit for being able to figure things out, rather than spoonfeeding everything.

Similarly, some of the character development must be extrapolated through the use of empathy on the part of the viewer, because the characters are driven through a series of emotional torments that one must try to relate to rather than having their emotions explained in some sort of pantomime. Movies are not a debate round where every argument must be completely explicit – sometimes the viewer must get wrapped up in a character’s mindspace and imagine how they would feel in this situation. This is, in fact, one of the key points of TTTW.

If anything, there is too much plot crammed together in a short span. “Being John Malkovich” is a movie with no plot, where people came up with a funny premise and then forgot to make a movie. TTTW, by contrast, is a movie with a steadily increasing drama where one learns about the characters, they develop, they go through all the key stages of life that all humans do, and it makes sense. Unlike so many movies with wasted potential (including “District 9″, b-t-dubs), TTTW not just a gimmicky premise, but it really pursues the premise to its logical conclusions.

Indeed, if there were any more dialogue between the main characters, Russ would probably have accused it of being a snoozer, right alongside “chick flick” (a critique levied, presumably, because there was emotion in this sci-fi film instead of cyborgs and automatic weapons).

Russ:
Misconception #2: The Time Traveler’s Wife is about time travel.
Fact: This movie has nothing to do with time travel.

It’s as if the author saw the movie Terminator once, and decided it would be super sexy to employ the Terminator rule that you have to time travel naked. Otherwise there are no rules. According to this movie, you can never alter the course of history as a time traveler (except when you do), and you definitely can never use your time travel powers to go anywhere interesting or historically significant. There are no parallel universes, time paradoxes, or Deloreans to be found. What Eric Bana does in this movie has nothing to do with space, time, or theoretical physics. It just confuses things to call this time travel. I prefer calling it, “Jamiroquai-ing.”

The real fact here, sadly, is that science fiction has boxed itself in so much as a genre that people have trouble recognizing originality or advancement of the genre. We have these neat little codes that we expect in time travel movies, where we want the requisite numbers of paradoxes, inventions, and significant historical events.

These are actually a bit of a crutch. Just the other day, I was talking to Russ about how zombie movies became a genre and now people will make the 23rd slight tweak on zombie theory without challenging key assumptions of the genre, let alone inventing a new one.

TTTW fearlessly rejects the genre stereotypes, while still having very interesting and profound things to say about time travel. It makes sense that if a person could time travel naturally, only their body would go. It makes sense that if one could do so naturally, it would be very hard (if not impossible) to control where or when one travels. It would be a jarring, crazy, disorienting experience that was altogether a pain in the ass, not some world-beating opportunity to make history totally different. It would be, functionally, a disability, which is how it’s presented in TTTW.

And because of the brilliance of the plot, Henry never does make a choice to change something about his future, try as he might in some cases. By the time he’s traveling back and meeting his wife, they’ve already hooked up in normal chronological time. Everything that happens has already been determined to happen and Henry never makes a choice to change anything when he’s traveled back or forward in time. I cannot stress enough how brilliantly consistent this is as an examination of time travel conceptually. There are no paradoxes because they are deftly avoided by the skilled mechanics of the plot.

Russ:
Misconception #3: The Time Traveler’s Wife is romantic.
Fact: The Time Traveler’s Wife is an allegory about an abusive relationship.

The time-traveling aspect is simply a mental trick invented by a rationalizing wife who doesn’t want to admit to herself that she married an alcoholic, distant man. This woman is in some serious denial. As are the many women who think they are married to a gallant, marauding, hero, who just happens to never be around. Keep drinking that Kool-Aid, ladies.

I will say that the parallel between what Clare experiences in this movie and a standard-issue absent husband is one of the strengths of the movie, not weaknesses. Because, of course, since she sees him disappear and there’s irrefutable proof throughout her life of the veracity of his time-travel claim, it’s not an abusive relationship. But it has much in common with one.

And this is, again, a strength of the film. Circumstances have more or less abridged the free will of both protagonists, putting them in a relationship they feel predestined to pursue. This predestination makes them each feel, at times, like the most blessed and the most cursed person in the world. This is probably not unlike most people feel in their ultimate relationship, making it a meaningful work of art for people in considering their own lives. But it’s especially clever here, because you have to look at Clare and say “Gee, even though he can’t help it, this looks a lot like a typical absent husband.”

This, however, does not contravene the romance of the story, because it’s unambiguous that the time travel is real. As a result, we are forced to envy the relationship displayed as somehow more fated and more truly destined, more perfect, in some ways, than our own. For Clare, her fairy tale is real, her imaginary magical friend really did come out of the woods and it all worked out. But at a price that reminds us we might not so easily trade places with Henry or Clare, which provokes yet more thought about our own decisions and lives. Since, ultimately, we do have more choice in our matters than they do, and this is a blessing.

Russ:
The only thing this movie succeeded in, was making me desperately want to time travel into a world where I’d left the theater 15 minutes in and snuck into District 9, instead.

“District 9″, which I saw earlier, is a lot like “Being John Malkovich”. The premise is great, there’s originality bouncing around the first 30 minutes like a Powerball machine with a broken “off” switch. But then it devolves into insane sci-fi stereotypes that prove exactly why TTTW is great, original science fiction and D9 is just another hackneyed Western with aliens. By the end of the movie, one wonders how much more they could get beaten over the head with the racial metaphors (despite the film itself being strangely racist at times) and one wonders why the creators chose to combine “The Fly” with “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”.

Yes, there are aliens! And space-age weaponry! And a mothership! And technology! But strip away the special effects and you have a patchy amalgam of meaningless slam-bam action and wooden props for characters. If you like your sci-fi in any way subtle or exploring something other than how to make a sequel with even more action, TTTW is a way better bet.

Last night, at the behest of my girlfriend, I saw the steaming pile of mastodon dung known as The Time Traveler’s Wife. Going in without reading the novel, I carried several misconceptions about the movie. I will now disabuse you of any of said misconceptions that might cause you to accidentally watch this thing…

Misconception 1: The Time Traveler’s Wife is a Movie.
Fact: The Time Traveler’s Wife is a highlight reel, poorly pasted together.

There is no consistency, no narrative, no character development, and virtually no plot. The husband and wife only interact with each other in brief exchanges that resemble something like this:

McAdams: “Where have you been?”
Bana: “I’ve been time traveling.”
McAdams: “Well, shit.”

As you can imagine, it’s awfully hard to develop any characters or plot when the protagonists are only allowed to speak two sentences before one of them gets dumped in the middle of a bridge for no reason.

Misconception #2: The Time Traveler’s Wife is about time travel.
Fact: This movie has nothing to do with time travel.

It’s as if the author saw the movie Terminator once, and decided it would be super sexy to employ the Terminator rule that you have to time travel naked. Otherwise there are no rules. According to this movie, you can never alter the course of history as a time traveler (except when you do), and you definitely can never use your time travel powers to go anywhere interesting or historically significant. There are no parallel universes, time paradoxes, or Deloreans to be found. What Eric Bana does in this movie has nothing to do with space, time, or theoretical physics. It just confuses things to call this time travel. I prefer calling it, “Jamiroquai-ing.”

Misconception #3: The Time Traveler’s Wife is romantic.
Fact: The Time Traveler’s Wife is an allegory about an abusive relationship.

The secret about this movie is that its entire purpose is to give women a justification for staying with a shoddy husband. Think about it. Here is a husband who skips out on his own wedding (letting some older dude take his place at the ceremony), leaves town for weeks at a time, and holds no job. Did I mention that he originally seduces his wife when she’s nine years old and he’s forty?

His excuse for this? He’s a “time traveler” (Jamiroquai-er). Whenever he gets stressed out (or drinks too heavily) he “time travels” to a place of no accountability, where he’s compelled to pick locks, break into stores and/or apartments, crossdress, steal things, and spend the night evading the cops.

The time-traveling aspect is simply a mental trick invented by a rationalizing wife who doesn’t want to admit to herself that she married an alcoholic, distant man. This woman is in some serious denial. As are the many women who think they are married to a gallant, marauding, hero, who just happens to never be around. Keep drinking that Kool-Aid, ladies.

The only thing this movie succeeded in, was making me desperately want to time travel into a world where I’d left the theater 15 minutes in and snuck into District 9, instead.

A genuinely frightening story from the Council for Secular Humanism, revealed that in several meetings with high level foreign officials, “Governor Bush,” revealed that the Iraq invasion was part of a fulfillment of the biblical apocalypse and that,

“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use the conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Chiriac also recounts Bush’s reference to the biblical characters “Gog and Magog,” and interpreting virtually every foreign policy problem as an opportunity to recreate the environs of the New Testament.

Though we did manage to survive that administration, the implications of that anecdote should frighten us on a daily basis. The truth is, we have a rather large segment of the population in this country (with some serious political clout) who genuinely hope for the apocalypse on a daily basis. Only a fiery end to civilization can justify the mental energy that they have invested into propping up the BoogeyMan and his BoogeyMinions.

These evangelicals don’t even have the courtesy to re-enact their fairytales on an individual basis. That is to say, it isn’t satisfying enough for evangelicals to play personal Armageddon and remove themselves from the gene pool. They seem to want every American to be cast in their deluded theater piece. They are highly devoted method actors determined to evoke a historically tragic Act III for all of us.

And they all vote.

…without the whole loss of a leg and focus on revenge.

Since I turned 18 and registered to vote, I have been looking forward to the opportunity of doing Jury Duty.  As the years passed and people around me got called in, my excitement grew.  Their stories of boredom, frustration, and loss of pay were lost on me.  I had my eyes on the prize and the prize was Jury Duty.

Yes, part of it is a hope to be that much closer to pretending I’m in a Law & Order episode.  But most of it is a desire to see our justice system up close and personal.

Where did you get this desire from, you ask?  I have no idea.  My father, the ever optimistic and encouraging father that he was, always said, “If you like sausages and you like the government, you don’t want to see either one being made.”  So, I don’t think I got the inspiration from him.

I won’t deny the excitement is tinged with a bit of fear.  What if I have to serve on a case where some company hires a guy to manipulate the jury into a particular outcome and they try to use something from my past or present to blackmail me?  Or what if I’m on a jury for a case against a mob boss and he hires someone to take me out?  But other than that, no worries!

Anyway, so here’s my saga…let me take you back two years ago…FINALLY, at the age of 32, I get a summons and for Grand Jury no less!  I’m super pumped because I’m 9 months pregnant and working for the city, so I’ll get paid in full while I’m doing it!  I show up, wait in a line, and when I get to the head of it, a woman asks, “Do you want to do Jury Duty?”  “YES!” I exclaim to which she responds by taking my form and saying I’ll receive something in the mail within the next 3-4 months.

What?!@#$!%#@$%

I called and pleaded with them, “can I not get assigned earlier?”  Nope, they’re booked.

Four months later…sure enough I get my summons when I’m no longer working and at home with a 2 month old.  Needless to say I postponed it via the phone, hoping and praying that I wouldn’t get it until I was working again.

One year later, I receive my summons and since I already postponed once, I have to go in in person.  Well, the important part of this story is not the fact that I had to postpone again because my current job doesn’t pay for jury duty and the city’s $40/day won’t cover childcare.  The important part is that no one asked for my ID at any stage of the process of signing in or signing up.  Maybe, they do when the case actually starts, but maybe not.  So, all I have to do is win the lottery so I can quit my job and then steal someone else’s jury duty summons and I’m golden.  Any volunteers with a winning ticket and current summons?

Interested in other Jury Duty experiences?

Download Mep Report #114

Specifically, promotion of Greg’s new novel, just released by Five Star Press.  The Third Sign, a work of epic fantasy called “a very satisfying tale from an intriguing new voice” by Bram Stoker award winning author David Niall Wilson and “memorable…gripping…if this book is any indication, the author is in for a long and successful career” by reviewers from The Beezer Review to SFFWorld to Library Journal, has gotten positive pre-publication attention, and if you have any interest in fantasy (or in supporting a Mep Reporter ), please stop by Greg’s personal webpage for information on how to order the book.  And thanks in advance for putting up with a bit of self-promotion!