Category Archives: Bizarre

When did softdrink bottlers begin smuggling out CIA messages to its agents?

Bizarre, Business, , , , , , ,

This afternoon, I opened up a nice, cool, refreshing bottle of diet Dr Pepper and was about to drink it down when I noticed that there were printed alphanumeric characters under the cap. The actual characters were YR6P4E 7HH4E6. I know that in the olden days, they used to have contests and you would try to get the lucky bottle cap, but this is something different.

Something sinister.

As I ran the alphanumeric characters through my Bat decoder ring, I suspected there was something seriously wrong here. These were in fact code symbols that are probably used by the CIA to communicate with secret agents working in super secret locations. I figure the only way they know how to keep in contact is by transmitting these numbers through diet Dr Pepper bottles.

So, this got me thinking that perhaps I accidentally bought a soda that was originally intended for a super secret spy who is now desperate to find out super secret information that can only be decoded from this particular bottle of soda. So, if anyone comes across a wayward super secret CIA spy hanging out at the local Quickie Mart on Main Street (right next door to the strip joint where that black-haired girl works…you know the one that called the cops on me and went all psycho with the restraining order?), then please let that secret agent know that the instructions YR6P4E 7HH4E6 have been successfully relayed to him as intended.

And thank him for keeping America safe. And drinking diet Dr Pepper as well.

Mainstream Smut & the Future of Cooperation Between Legacy Publishers and E-Books

Bizarre, Book Reviews, Books, Business, News, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a book story that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s a book called Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (a pseudonym). It started out as an ebook and then went through a huge bidding war before it was bought by a major publishing house. It’s been compared to the Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games series, which is why the big bidding war took place. But the history of this book is a little, well, um, interesting.

You see, the book isn’t a young adult book. It’s an adult book. A very adult book. It’s basically a book about bondage and discipline, where a young woman gets drawn into a world where some dominant guy becomes her master. Most of the time, a book like this ends up being marginalized and sold as ebook smut. Such a book is very, very difficult to sell mainstream.

Yet, it happened. It became that “book” that adults bought (most often the demographic of housewives, which is another story itself) but didn’t really reveal they were reading. Now, the big publishing companies AND movie companies, see this as the next big thing and are looking to market it because of its success as an ebook.

Well, that’s going to be interesting, to say the least. You see, the book did really well because it was an ebook. Think about that for a second. When you buy an ebook, you can read it in public, and almost no one has a clue what you’re reading. But bring a book onto the train (an actual book) and everyone knows what you’re reading. That’s going to make it really difficult to get people to want to read this book in public. That’s going to kill a lot of chances of selling it to the mainstream public because it’s going to be the equivalent of reading erotica in public. Good luck on that one.

Yet, the publishing industry it’s got the next Twilight on its hands.

What this is actually showing me is that the Legacy Publishers (the ones who still print books and then ebooks as an afterthought) are starting to realize that ebooks are a viable market that might slowly overcome the old style market. Yet, I don’t think they understand the nuances involved in ebooks versus mainstream books.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I also have an adult book out there somewhere being sold as an ebook. It’s written under a completely different name, mainly because I chose a long time ago to distance my writing name from that other stuff. It’s not that I’m not proud of the other novel, or even ashamed of it. I just realized that for simple, rational (and sometimes irrational) reasons, people are often more comfortable separating the two names for the types of books that are published under those names. Throughout history, mainstream writers have done this as a precaution to keep the two camps of readers apart.

An example: Some years back, there was a series of books written by John Norman (the pseudonym of John Frederick Lange, Jr.) about a mythical land called Gor. It was one of those series that had a huge following, basically taking a complete life of its own. The premise of it centered around a civilization of highly structured slavery. This series has spawned into a lifestyle culture of people who partake in the culture of living a Gorean lifestyle, which generally revolves around a strong master/slave society. Sometimes the genders are mixed (as in sometimes its female controlled, but most often it tends to gravitate towards a male dominant household). Anyway, because the ideas of his novels were so against the mainstream thought, Norman remained the header on all of these stories and Lange made every effort to keep his secret identity. During the 1970s, as the series was at its zenith, a woman I knew named Laura figured out who the author was, including where he was teaching and confronted him directly about it. For years, he protested his involvement but then eventually he gave in, realizing that secret was quickly catching up with him. Today, pretty much everyone who has ever read these books knows exactly who was the author. Fortunately for him, he was already so famous as a writer that it didn’t actually affect his teaching career.

The same kind of thing happened when vampire-story writer Anne Rice was revealed to be writing under a number of names that published books on male and female lifestyle slavery. Because she was already so famous as a novelist, these revelations didn’t hurt her career, and then soon after her identity was discovered, she started writing religious fiction, and her career has really never returned to the power career it once was.

What is interesting to note about all of these cases is that the stories themselves never really became mainstream. Even Rice’s book, Exit to Eden, which became a major motion picture some years ago starring Dan Ackroyd and Rosie Odonnell, never really became the hot seller as a mainstream novel. And the reason is simple: It was perceived by mainstream America as smut. Which is sad because it’s a brilliantly written novel (and a horrible movie adaptation that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the book).

So, as this “new” series moves into mainstream writing, I’m wondering how it is going to do in that realm. All attempts to bring S&M into mainstream have never succeeded. Madonna tried to do it for years, and every time she did, she continued to remain famous, but those attempts (including a picture book, several songs and videos and even a major motion picture) continue to remain obscure in her collection of mainstream releases. Recently, even Rihanna tried to present such material to a mass audience, and she was criticized for responding badly to her scandal of how she had been beaten by her boyfriend (which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, as her adventures in that realm only served to be used as continued criticism…making some kind of weird connection to PTSD from being beaten by Chris Brown as her motivation behind why she’d do a move into S&M music video…yeah, the argument didn’t make a lot of sense to me either at the time).

The upshot of the whole thing is that no matter how hard people try, fringe sexual activity is rarely ever going to be seen as acceptable by sex-obsessed Americans who pretend to be shocked when they secretly covet all sorts of different sexual material. It’s like a politician who screams “sinner” at random strangers while having an affair with another woman to hide his predilection for having sex with children. America has never really made a lot of sense.

But expect to see a lot of shocked faces when people start to realize what they actually bought into now that everyone has jumped on the popularity of a bdsm book that publishers are convinced is ready for the mass public. I think they’re ready, but I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.

XXX: The Domain That No One Wants

Bizarre, News, Politics, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

An interesting thing has happened to the Internet. It’s adding porn. Yes, in case you didn’t know it, porn has not existed on the Internet until someone decided there was a need for it. Up until now, anyone involved with porn has been required to keep in off line, but some kid with a dream (supposedly a wet one) came up with this pie in the sky idea of creating a web domain so that all of the poor porn purveyors could one day experience pornography on the Internet. So, the government decided to invent XXX as a domain suffix (affix?) that now leads people directly to whatever their heart’s desire, as sick as that might be.

Okay, all sarcasm aside, porn has been on the web as long as the web has existed. You might even say that it led the growth, so to speak, of the Internet. But for the longest time, pornography has been integrated with non-porn sites so that quite often you ended up on a porn site instead of the one you were trying to get to. At least that’s the excuse I’ve been using, but that’s probably another issue. Anyway, the government decided some time ago that if they could create an area of the web where porn could be “controlled”, then everything would be great. So the idea of a XXX suffix was designed. And of course, because porn makes a lot of money, they decided they would charge $100-200 for the usage of the XXX domain.

Here’s the problem with their plan. No one wants it. And I mean “NO ONE.” The pornographers don’t like being separated from the rest of the web because they realize that most legitimate Internet providers will be cajoled into just blocking any XXX area. I’m sure someone will say “it’s for the children”, but whatever the reason, someone is going to make sure that people are unable to access this area of the web. The people who don’t like porn don’t like it either because they think that all of the bad people will suddenly come to the web (like they weren’t on it before). And I’m sure they’re convinced that because “of the children” they’ll need to somehow shut down this cesspool of depravity.

And no one else will like it either because it will mean more crap on the web that they don’t want to deal with. You’ll probably have all sorts of privacy issues and scams and whatnot because of this. What will end up happening is that the porn people will continue creating and making porn on the regular sites, and XXX will be relegated to a few choice names that most people won’t pay attention to. The government will probably step in and surreptitiously design some kind of monitoring system so that they can see who accesses pornography on the web (which they’ll argue is for good reasons, but will eventually be used to shame, humiliate and then blackmail people), so that the only people who use XXX will be those who are clueless at the problems they’re causing by accessing porn the “right way” instead of the logical way.

In the end, the whole project will be abandoned, much like the old newsgroups were destroyed when they were spammed to death by, well, porn. What started out as a great idea always ended up being destroyed by someone trying to make a quick buck, doing whatever he can do to scam you before you figure out what’s happening to you. The only victims will be the ones who went into it innocently because they felt it was the proper way to do things. The bad people, the criminals, and those smart enough to realize the value of anonymity, will continue to do things the way they have always done it. In secret and not where government and censors can find them.

(Update: Turns out I was incorrect on the price of the domain registration. According to Daily Tech, it is $200-300, not $100-200 as I thought).

What Causes the Media to Focus on a Particular Story?

Bizarre, News, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , , ,

ABC News International ran an interesting story the other day about Mikhail Gorbachev. It covered the last years of Gorbachev’s control of the Soviet Union right before it collapsed. Today, Reuter’s ran yet another interesting analysis of the August Coup that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both stories came out of nowhere and pretty much had nothing to do with any particular story that was going on at the time. So, my question is: Why are mainstream news entities running these stories that seem to have no current relevance, yet both seem to be very intent on covering details that happened at around the same time, almost as if they’re complementing each other to tell us a much larger story of some kind of relevance.

Normally, I wouldn’t notice this, but I happened to have done a lot of research on the August Coup for my master’s thesis a few years ago, and it’s currently the setting of my most recent novel, 72 Hours in August. So when this sort of story drops, and it has a lot of relevance to what I’m writing, I find it very significant. However, before this, there was almost no information on the subject, which made for some very difficult research at the time. Now, it’s almost as if I could have just typed Google and would have everything I needed a few years ago. It sometimes doesn’t make any sense.

So I wonder at what agenda news medias have when they run these sorts of stories. Is there something going on with Gorbachev right now that causes senior members of the media establishment to want us to focus on the information? Is Russia about to become highly relevant again on the international stage in a way that it isn’t already? Does some analogy of coups have the possibility of transcending current events in a way that someone feels we need to have this seed planted before new events take place? In other words, is some huge coup coming around the corner, involving social media (in which Yeltsin’s response to the August Coup pretty much reinvented social media responses to huge events) so that we need to be reminded of how significant resistance is because we’re about to experience it again? Or is this such a slow news cycle that media personnel are resurrecting old stories for no reason, that have no connection to anything, just because there’s nothing else going on?

I tend to go with the conspiracy side of the house. I believe things are linked for reasons, even if it’s not that obvious why. I’m not saying there’s some diabolical mustache-twirler in a hidden office hidden underground who is manipulating things (although I’m not saying there’s not one either), but some things seem a little too random to be completely random, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I’m wondering if we’ll start to see the third prong of the story framing, because one thing still seems to be missing, and I have a feeling it’s coming around the corner. Unfortunately, my guess as to what it will be is probably as good as yours. Or worse, considering I usually suspect Elmo is involved, but that’s a whole other issue….

Women Are Causing Problems Again!

Bizarre, Religion, , ,

(FYI: This article is satire, so if you read it, please understand that it’s not meant to be taken seriously. For some reason WAY too many people have responded to this article as if it’s actually a criticism against women. Most people get the point of this post as a post-modernist criticism against Iranian patriarchal policies, but unfortunately not everyone else does)

This just in! Women cause earthquakes. I mean, we all suspected this. Women are known for doing some pretty evil things, but it wasn’t until we checked with Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, who stated eruditely, “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.” I mean, what more evidence do we need than that.

Come to think of it, this type of cause and effect analysis reminds me of the gnome underwear thieves in South Park, who argue profit strategy, summed up as:

1. Steal the world’s underwear

2. ???

3. Profit!

Now, it wouldn’t be a funny story if just some obscure cleric made such a ridiculous comment, but soon after, it was backed by none other than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who then argued that as a result of this horrible situation brought on by promiscuous and sexy-dressing women that an imminent earthquake is going to hit Tehran, advocating that its 12 million residents must relocate IMMEDIATELY.

Now, I don’t want to point fingers, but I’ve always suspected that women wearing sexy clothing cause horrible calamities in the world. I mean, think about it. In 1909, there was an earthquake in San Francisco. Sexy women were dancing in brothels in San Francisco at the time. Need more evidence? Before the huge earthquake in Haiti, I heard that some guys were in downtown Los Angeles having a lap dance from a stripper named Roxy. Although I was not there to report it, due to a stupid jury duty appointment I had to keep, I can bet Roxy was wearing some pretty revealing clothing. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of nothing BUT what she might have been wearing since I was unable to make that appointment.

We really need to do something to stop women from causing these horrible disasters. Obviously, we can’t ask them to patrol themselves because they’d just go back to their lascivious ways because they’re women, and we know you can’t trust them and their lustful manners. Therefore, I’m proposing a task force, led by me because I care so much, to go into places where we know evil, morally-bankrupt women to congregate and educate them on how they are derailing our attempts to circumvent earthquakes and wonton destruction. I could start on the west coast and work my way east.

I mean, someone has to think about the children.

By the way, the article can be found here. I’d blame Fox News, but it originates from the Associated Press.

Did Someone Mention Time Travel?

Bizarre

There’s a photo from a museum in British Columbia that is making the rounds on the Internet that is quite fascinating (if it hasn’t been Photoshopped, that is). It is a photo from the 1940s, and it shows a very unlikely subject in the photograph. You can see him with his cool ray sunglasses and modern haircut, along with the clothing that he is wearing.

Anyway, waiting to see this debunked soon. Already there is quite a discussion taking place on forgetomori. Now, as the ultimate skeptic, I doubt there’s anything to this, but it sure is interesting for a Monday morning.