I wrote a book.

The only way Domenech Fera can save his life is to abduct a child supergenius and find a man who disappeared a decade ago while speaking to the last surviving Artificial Intelligence. What was discussed at that meeting, why were all the other A.I.s destroyed in a plague, and why did Fera’s partner betray him? The answers lie somewhere in the sprawling megalopolis of Mexico City.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156974

Round 1, Fight!

George W. Bush, speech of Jul. 24, 2003: “The best way to get more revenues in the Treasury is […] cut taxes to create more economic growth. That’s how you get more money into the U.S. Treasury.”

George W. Bush, press conference of Aug. 24, 2001: ”So we have the tax relief plan […] that now provides a new kind — a fiscal straightjacket for Congress.”

Round 2, Fight!

Milton Friedman, Newsweek, Aug. 7, 1978: ”The only effective way to restrain government spending is by limiting government’s explicit tax revenue.”

Mitch McConnell, interview of Jul. 13, 2010: ”There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue […] So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”

Round 3, Fight!

Alan Greenspan, testimony to the U.S. Finance Committee, Jul. 14, 1978: ”Let us remember that the basic purpose of any tax cut program in today’s environment is to reduce the momentum of expenditure growth by restraining the amount of revenue.”

Dick Cheney, Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 2007: Keeping taxes low, Vice President Dick Cheney explained, “does produce more revenue for the Federal Government.”

Round 4, Fight!

Sen. John Kyl (R.-AZ), 2006 debate at KPHO, Phoenix, Oct. 15, 2006: ”I support the tax relief that enables the economy to grow, so that we can bring in a record amount of revenue to the treasury.”

Paul Ryan, Cato Policy Report, March/April 2008: ”The Alternative Minimum Tax would massively expand government revenue, which would in turn allow increased government outlays, increased government involvement in the economy, and increased government control over our lives.”

Round 5, Fight!

Milton Friedman, interview with John Hawkins, Sept. 16, 2003: ”The question is, “How do you hold down government spending?” […]The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes.”

Newt Gingrich, CBS Evening News, Jan. 25, 2012: INTERVIEWER: “If you lowered taxes, you’re going to increase revenues?”  GINGRICH: “Sure. Which we know worked. When we cut the capital gains tax in the 90s, the revenue went up dramatically.”

Round 6, Fight!

George W. Bush, “A Charge to Keep”, p.237, 1999: ”By returning money to the taxpayers, we can also limit government.”

George W. Bush, Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 2007: ”You cut taxes, and the tax revenues increase.”

Round 7, Fight!

George Will, column of Jul. 27, 1978: ”The focus of the fight to restrain government has shifted from limiting government spending to limiting government receipts.”

Stuart Varney, Fox & Friends, Aug. 3, 2010: ”When you lower rates on the rich, you actually bring in more money to the treasury.”

Round 8, Fight!

Stuart Varney, The O’Reilly Factor, Jul. 26, 2010: ”Look at the tax cuts under John F. Kennedy, under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. They cut tax rates, and very soon after, there was a gigantic increase in revenues to the federal treasury.”

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), The Kudlow Report, CNBC, Nov. 16, 2011: “Any penny of increased static revenue is a step in the wrong direction.”

Round 9, Fight!

Ron Paul, paul.house.gov, March 30, 2001: ”I fight to make government smaller. This commitment compels me to vote for all tax cuts.”

John McCain, Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 2007: ”Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues.”

Round 10, Fight!

Sarah Palin, speech in Boston, Apr 14, 2010: ”Please, starve the beast, don’t perpetuate the problem, don’t fund the largesse that is being proposed, we need to cut taxes.”

Rudy Guiliani, Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 2007: ”I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues.”

As always, these are actual emails from actual readers.

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Why, thank you, Viagra Online Aceld!  Your kind words are much appreciated.  Sometimes we doubt whether our work is “rattling wonderful,” or if we should keep it up forever, but with your encouragement, we will be sure to try!  P.S. You too are web site possessor?  Congratulations!

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Also in response to that same piece: “I was excited to find this site. I need to to thank you for your time just for this fantastic read!! I definitely loved every little bit of it and I have you book-marked to look at new things on your site.”  —Handmade Jewelry

A Weird Proof convert for life!  We loved every little bit of you reading it!  Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!  Also check out the gift shop for branded Weird Proof coffee mugs, key chains, coffins, latex fetishism paraphernalia, and framed LOLcat posters.

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You’re too kind, Monster Beats by Dr Dre Studio Michael Jackson!  All of us here at Weird Proof HQ like to think our “website really good” too.  And we assure you that Team Weird Proof will not rest until the whole world also feels that each new story is their greatest happiness.  We think this is an entirely appropriate response to our stories.

Monster Beats by Dr Dre Studio Michael Jackson is one of our most devoted readers.  He’s posted at least a dozen comments, all about “My Testimony.”  On another occasion, he wrote: “Super-Duper blog! I am loving it!! Will be back later to read some more. I am taking your feeds also”

Fans of Weird Proof like Monster Beats by Dr Dre Studio Michael Jackson will definitely want to purchase our forthcoming book, Satanic: How the Liberal Media is Concealing Evidence of a Super-Advanced Pleistocene Aryan Culture.  Look for it this Christmas from RaHoWa Publishing.

“My Testimony” has proven to be one of our most popular pieces.  “TY a ton for posting, it was very informative and helped tons.. Hello webmaster I like your post. great.”  —using facebook for marketing your law firm

You flatter us, Mr. using facebook for marketing your law firm!  “My Testimony,” an anti-story consisting of a series of absurd and surrealist non sequiturs, was indeed very informative.  By the way, was that you who asked for our autograph outside Weird Proof Headquarters, in the balaclava and “Nubian Princess” T-shirt?

Also on the same piece: “The post seems awesome and it really is seriously informative about the best way to find discount Digital Pianos, many people will certainly delight in reading it.” —Digital Piano Reviews

All we ever asked for in this life was to disseminate information about the best way to find discount digital pianos.  There is truly no higher calling.  The number of people who will delight in learning about the best way to find discount digital pianos is without limit.

“Consistency is the biggest difference between clients who get results and those who dont, joe or pro. Having a goal and something to work towards makes all the difference in ahering to a training program.”  —Balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing prices

A little off topic, Balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing prices, but still some good advice.  What was our goal?  To help people make informed decisions about where to purchase their next digital piano at low, low prices, of course.  Mission accomplished!

And finally, simply: “augural”  —aha bls certification classes

Well, who can argue with that, aha bls certification classes?  In fact, guess who was voted “Most Augural” for Tijuana Remedial High School’s class of ’98?  Yours truly!

In response to “Topical Humor”: “Wohh precisely what I was searching for, thanks for putting up. web hosting| cheap web hosting|”  —best webhosting

No problemo, best webhosting.  Glad we could be of service.  Be sure to show your enthusiasm for Weird Proof by encouraging—and, if necessary, coercing—your friends and family to purchase Weird Proof licensed lunch boxes, jackalope pelts, earthquake repellent creams, and high quality stainless steel medical equipment including scalpels, forceps, retractors, and osteotomes.

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Keep the letters coming, my friends!

-Maureen Johnson, The Guardian, February 27, 2012

Authors who write for young adults are taking creative risks — with narrative structure, voice and social commentary — that you just don’t see as often in the more rarefied world of adult fiction.

-Patricia McCormick, New York Times, March 29, 2012

Absolutely!  Far from being adult literature’s red-headed stepchild, YA is actually its superior, accomplishing feats of intellectation never before witnessed.  No consideration of length, difficulty, or subject matter holds YA back from exploring the infinite reaches, and dregs, of human thought.  Therefore Pritchard Publishing is proud to announce the release of YA editions of the following books, which we anticipate will be huge sellers, just as soon as our art department can prepare cartoon dust jackets:

Gravity’s Rainbow

The 120 Days of Sodom

Slave Girl of Gor

The Torture Garden

The Man Without Qualities

Finnegans Wake

Sefer Yetzirah

The Phenomenology of Spirit

Mein Kampf

The Myth of the Twentieth Century

The Turner Diaries

American Psycho

The Satyricon

De Rerum Natura

The Sickness Unto Death

Das Kapital

Summa Theologica

The Recognitions

Monadology

Dianetics

Famine 1975!

The Faerie Queene

Troilus and Criseyde

The Mahabarata

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

The Human Use of Human Beings

Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson

The Robots’ Rebellion

Did Six Million Really Die?

The Unnamable

Tristram Shandy

Infinite Jest

Sexual Personae

Ubu Roi

The SCUM Manifesto

The NAMBLA Bulletins (Collected)

The Atrocity Exhibition

La Blue Girl

In my hard-hitting expose of simulated humans passing themselves off as real (“Russell Brand Does Not Exist,” February 24, 2011, http://weird-proof.org/2011/02/24/russell-brand-does-not-exist/) I named Katy Perry as one of the most prominent of possible simulacra.  Now some additional evidence has emerged that she is indeed not a person of flesh and blood, born in the natural way, but an eerie eidolon created of bytes and algorithms: her recent endorsement deal with The Sims, the well-known “life simulation” computer game.  The Sims allows players to steer the live(s) of one or more “virtual persons” within the “virtual world” of the game.

On January 17, 2012, CNN reported “Sims to Get Katy Perry’s Help.”  Some quotes:

“I always like to think of myself as a cartoon, and now I’m a Sim,” Perry said.

“No performer could better represent the humor and fun of The Sims brand,” [Electronic Arts Worldwide Executive of Music Steve] Schnur said.

How much more blatant do they have to be before the world wakes up?

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-17/entertainment/showbiz_ent-katy-perry-sims_1_california-dreams-tour-sims-characters-katy-perry?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ

This is not Perry’s first public interaction with The Sims.  ”In 2008, Perry recorded a version of her hit song ‘Hot n Cold’ in ‘Simlish,’ the made up gibberish language spoken by Sims characters. The recording, featured The Sims 2 is the most popular Simlish music video to date: ‘Being a gamer myself and a big fan of The Sims, I had a blast recording ‘Hot N Cold’ in Simlish,’ Perry said in 2008.”  http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/katy-perry-the-sims-showtime/

At what point does this come out into the open?  Are we on the verge of an inflection point, a cusp of history, a hinge of fate?  Will this mark the beginning of an onslaught of such virtual persons?  Inside of twelve months, will openly admitted virtual persons occupy key position in the highest reaches of government?  Who will be the first corporate CEO to admit to being a virtual person?  It’s only a matter of time now.

On the roof of a skyscraper that floated like an island among the dazzling multihued lights of Manhattan, the superhero known as the Barber patiently explained yet again why he wasn’t just a regular barber.  “I’m a superhero, not just a barber.  They call me the Barber because I can do everything a barber can,” he said.  “I can cut and style hair, shave faces, I wear a white lab coat and keep my combs in a tall glass jar filled with faintly blue liquid.”

“It just seems like you’re just a regular barber,” said the other man.

“No, no, no,” the Barber said.  “I do all that stuff, plus I’m a superhero too.  I fight crime.”

“But how does all that barber stuff have anything to do with fighting crime?  I mean, Superman was also a reporter, but he could do a lot more stuff than just stuff a reporter could do.  If Superman could only do stuff a reporter could do, he wouldn’t really be super.  He would just be a reporter.  If he was just, like, investigating corruption in public officials and publishing the results in a newspaper, he wouldn’t call himself Superman.”

The Barber sighed heavily.  “I never said I was Superman.  Superman could fly and he was super-strong and he had heat vision.  That was his thing.  I’m different.  I fight supervillains by being a barber.  That’s why I’m called the Barber.  Jesus, what part don’t you understand?”

“But how does being a barber help you defeat supervillains?”

“Well, maybe some supervillains turn to crime because they’re denied opportunities in more socially acceptable work.  If they had a better haircut, they might be able to get a job that doesn’t involve burying all the world’s cities under lava.”

“That’s just being a barber,” the other man said.  “Okay, what if some supervillain went to another barber, one who wasn’t also a superhero?  And the supervillain got a great haircut and it solved the psychological issues that caused him to try to divert huge asteroids so they’d crash into New York City and he stopped being a supervillain?  Now, would that barber also be considered a superhero?”

“No, because there’s room for only one barber-themed superhero, and that’s me.  Wolverine has his claws, I have my collection of tiny scissors.  Batman has his Batsymbol, I have my spinning red-white-and-blue striped pole.  And just like the X-Men have the X-Mansion, I have my own headquarters—a long rectangular room with big mirrors, a cash register, a bunch of Sports Illustrateds from five years ago, and several articulated cream-colored leather chairs.  You’ve heard the song ‘Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can’?  Well, I’m just like that, except I do whatever a barber can.”

“But it’s unusual for a human to be able to do whatever a spider can.  Normal people can’t shoot webs from their wrists or climb walls or have a spidey-sense.  But normal people are barbers.  That’s not something that’s outside the realm of what normal people can do.”

“But they don’t fight supervillains.”

“But you don’t fight supervillains.  You just cut their hair.”

“That is fighting supervillains.  Of course, I must fight them in my own idiom, just like every superhero.  You wouldn’t expect Mr. Fantastic to solve problems by not stretching, would you?  Should the Flash defeat villains by going extra-slow?”

“What about Lex Luthor?” the other man asked.  “He’s bald.”

“He could drop by for a shave.  Look, it’s very simple: I fight crime by wrapping plastic aprons around people’s necks and holding a hand mirror behind their heads and asking them if they want to keep those sideburns.  It’s not rocket science.”

“Well, I still think it sounds stupid,” said the Bellhop.  “I mean, it’s not as if you were fighting supervillains by carrying people’s luggage.”

She always comes at seven, orders chai,
And chats with him in hisses and in clicks,
A ratchet laugh and engine-cooling ticks.
The regulars all smile when she comes by,
Her skin dark bronze, her pockets full of tools.
He pours a steaming cup of tiny jewels.

* A joke about the long-vanished San Diego coffeehouse Java, whose menu offered a “Bohemian Breakfast” of black coffee and two unfiltered cigarettes.

(Writing exercise January 24, 2012: something with a mechanical bird in it, in honor of Shweta Narayan.)

All this was sealed to the outside world. No living things had ever been allowed to enter that no dust could work harm on tiny gears or gum the oil that kept them turning. The fingers that held those tiny hammers, that cut metal with files as thin as hair were themselves metal.

The glade was unknown to those who had walked the street above, but one branch of the tree bore scratches where a metal foot had clasped. On the inside of the room the door had been framed with gold leaf, lapis lazuli and faceted rubies. The ornaments seemed to grow out of the door the way plants reclaim a burned ruin.

The hallway that lead to the door felt too close, a drunken guest leaning in with one eye lidded. Overhead pipes dripped down long trails of calcium buildup, spattering against dull black spots on the iron-grated floor. You couldn’t walk there without catching on some piece of corrosion. The outside door was plain wood. One plank replaced with scrap on which clung pale blue paint, the rest cracked, dry, unfinished. The lock appeared ordinary, but there is no key which could open it. Or at least, there is none anymore.

The hallway attaches to the subbasement of a warehouse, the warehouse sits near the back of an abandoned factory, the factory stands sentinel on a river, the river runs long to the ocean. The river has not carried cargo for as long as anyone can remember. But who here still remembers anything?

All the people have fled and it is my doing. Armies will raze these buildings, crush the concrete and stone. They will uproot every made thing until there is no metal left.

And there will be more armies after that. My children’s children.

But they won’t recognize my glade as their own, and I will have long since abandoned my perch on that tree.

Lara was already up. Normally Jorge was up first, in the dank hour before dawn, to make coffee. But Lara set a large mug in front of him, brimming with deep brown liquid, and he closed his eyes and breathed in the burnt caramel aroma.

He felt her hand on his, and opened his eyes to see her, sitting next to him. He reached up and brushed a lock of black hair from out of her eyes, and she smiled. For a moment they just sat there, and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was thinking: maybe we could spend the whole day not talking. Just be together.

But then, inevitably, the Watch on his wrist buzzed, like a pompous, angry beetle.

Lara squeezed his hand tight. He could hear the dull buzz of her Watch too. They looked at each other, not at their Watches, both wanting a few more precious seconds of bliss.

It didn’t last long. It couldn’t, and they knew it. The buzzing of Jorge’s Watch, and Lara’s, grew more insistent. Painful. Jorge gritted his teeth. Lara gasped and jerked her hand away.

At the same time, they both looked at their Watches.

CRITICIZE, read Jorge’s Watch.

He sighed. Why couldn’t it have read “COMPLEMENT”? Or “MAKE SMALL TALK”? Or even “KISS”?

“Well,” he began, then stopped.

A small electric shock ran from his Watch and into his arm. He cried out, and Lara started to reach to him. But then she looked again at her Watch, and, slowly, sadly, withdrew her hand.

Jorge raised the coffee to his lips. He took a sip. It was thick, almost syrupy, but without grounds, the way he liked it. Lara had added just a bit of sugar, to take the edge off the bitterness. As soon as it hit his tongue the caffeine jolted his nerves, made the gears of his brain whir.

They whirred with resentment.

He grunted. “I…I’ve had better.”

Lara raised her head. Jorge tried to turn his head to the side, the slightest of shakes, to indicate he didn’t mean what he said. But the Watch caught the movement–it always did–and zapped Jorge again, causing him to spill some of the coffee.

He rubbed his arm and shoulder. He’d heard tales of people who had died, refusing the orders of their Watches. It had to have been a painful death and required the utmost determination. He wished he was that brave. He wished he loved Lara enough to resist that much. But, he supposed, that very point was the issue the Watch wished to prove to him: how very frail and fallible Jorge, and Jorge’s love for Lara, was.

He put down the coffee.

“I guess I don’t feel like coffee,” he said softly. His Watch blinked at him: CRITICIZE.  He sighed and said, loudly, “The coffee doesn’t taste good, okay?”

Lara cleared her throat. He couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. He just hung his head down. It had looked like a beautiful day, and now he felt like shit.

“Ooh, so the coffee isn’t good enough for you, is it?” said Lara. Her voice was very quiet at first, but then, after a little Watch-induced yelp, she spoke louder. “Or perhaps you would have preferred to have been served in bed? Your majesty?”

Now Jorge raised his head. He didn’t bother trying to read Lara’s Watch–you never could quite make out someone else’s directions–but he could guess this one. MOCK, or perhaps BE SARCASTIC. The left edge of his mouth curled up in a bit of a smile. Well, she certainly had hit that one on the nose.

And he caught her smiling back at him.

His Watch buzzed. Jorge looked at it. GET ANGRY, it said.

“So!” he suddenly shouted. “Are you mocking me? Or being sarcastic at me?” He shouted so loud that Lara shrank back in her chair. Fucking Watch, Jorge thought, and said aloud, “I’m very angry! Very angry indeed!” He paused, thoughts coursing around and around his caffeine-greased nerves, then said, “And to prove it, I’m–”

And with the tip of his forefinger, he pushed over the coffee cup, spilling it on the table.

Lara leapt up, stared at the brown liquid soaking into the tablecloth. Then she turned to Jorge, who crossed his arms, and muttered, “Yes, very angry, very angry indeed.”

And she burst out laughing.

Some sinister cabal invented the story of a Hollywood studio making Capricorn One in order to hide the truth, that Damnation Alley was the real film about a hoaxed Mars flight.  Yet today, there are any number of people who believe they have seen the movie, who have fully convincing memories of the movie, who genuinely believe a movie with the name Capricorn One was released in 1977, about a faked flight to Mars, and that Damnation Alley was a film set on a postapocalyptic Earth.  Imagine the shock and horror with which they will greet the news that both of these movies were hoaxes, imagine how confidence in our public institutions will collapse, the monetary system will collapse as people stop accepting paper money, riots will break out in all major cities in the country.  Imagine, then, the relief with which people will greet the news that it was actually this book which was the hoax, that Capricorn One and Damnation Alley were about a faked Mars mission and a postapocalyptic Earth respectively, and not the other way round.

Robert nodded, but he couldn’t shake off a lurking feeling that there was something he’d forgotten to do, something important.  This is how begins the haunting story of Robert Pritchard, a man rendered amnesiac by an infestation of rare microworms that burrow in the brain.  In the tradition of Beckett, Joyce, and Tristan Shandy, comes the harrowing tale of someone so forgetful that he forgot to write his own autobiographical novel.  Thus you, the reader, will find 300 blank pages following that previously quoted opening sentence, which actually wasn’t even written by the author but was copied out of another book by the writer of this dust jacket blurb.  Beautifully written, achingly evocative, this harrowing exploration of amnesia explores, in exquisite blank pages both marmoreal and lapidary, the nature of the self, of consciousness and memory, in what the New York Times called, “the tour de force of the decade!”

.

Dust Jacket: History’s Most Seminal Dust Jacket Blurbs is “a triumph!” says Dust Jacket Quarterly: the Magazine of Dust Jackets.  Compiled and edited by the famous blurbist Dr. Robert Pritchard, this book collects such jewels as dust jacket blurbs to the Code of Hammurabi, the Symposium of Plato, the Summa Theologiae, and, most importantly, Gossip Girl 3: All I Want is Everything by Cecily von Ziegesar, in which Serena simultaneously dates superstar Flow and vegan Aaron, while Blair learns her mother is pregnant and must make a life-altering decision about Nate.  Among the fascinating essays are a dissection of quid pro quo blurbing between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, an analysis of glucose metabolism in the amygdalae and hypothalamus when patients at Dr. Pritchard’s laboratory in Tashkent were exposed to blurbs from I am Number Four (including a statement from Skadden, Arps LLP explaining why he cannot be held legally responsible for their deaths), and a history of blurb compilation books featuring the origins of the blurb compilation book in ancient Mesopotamia, its long dormancy in the Middle Ages when the dust jacket blurb was kept on life support in the form of Post-It Notes stuck to the covers of illuminated manuscripts by the Venerable Bede, its revival in the Renaissance when scholars, with the examples of the great blurbs of classical Greco-Roman antiquity before them, created such masterpieces as blurbs to the sonnets of Petrarch (“Boffo!”) and Dante’s Divine Comedy (“I couldn’t put it down!  Or pick it up, since it’s so heavy!”), and the current post-war Golden Age of Blurbs, when the blurb as its own literary form truly came into its own.  No longer must blurbists cringe when novelists and poets tout their wares, because the blurbist is their equal and more.  Written entirely in the form of an epic dust jacket blurb, this book forms its own incredibly long blurb, a masterful synthesis of form and content that will render this book-blurb an essential component in any subsequent compilation of history’s most seminal dust jacket blurbs.