Nibbled To Death By Vicious People Eating Ducks

Growl grump.

Hmm... It occurs to me you might be more responsive if I don't start out in such a whiny negative manner. Let me start over.

Laughy smiley growl grump.

Granted it's a grey gloomy day, with a whole week of them forecast, and that summer vanished when I wasn't looking. Granted also that a certain team that shall remain nameless but used to be known as the New York Yankees, played the entire month of September, not to mention the beginning of October, as though they were a certain other team that shall remain nameless but play the same sport in the same city, only generally not as well as the first team that shall remain nameless.

You know I hate to break up such a whiny negative blog entry, but I spent the weekend reading The Big Bam by Leigh Montville, a biography of Babe Ruth, and it was extremely entertaining.

Okay. Back to whiny and negative.

First of all, there's this movie coming out called Life As We Know It. I was watching the football game last night (which the Giants won, and the Jets won earlier in the day, so I can't be whiny and negative about everything, gosh darn it), and I had the TV on mute (I'm morally opposed to watching commercials), so I saw a commercial for the movie and thought it was a commercial for Parenthood, which I've never seen (although I did see the movie). But at the end of the commercial it said it was for Life As We Know It, a movie that clearly has a very big budget for advertising, since Sunday Night Football doesn't come cheap, and neither do full page color ads in the NY Times.

I've known about the existence of this movie for a little while, so none of this is taking me by surprise (except the size of their advertising budget). I haven't been able to find any early reviews, so this could be prejudice speaking, but my guess is it will turn out to be a major stinkeroony that will have no effect on my life whatsoever, except maybe to teach me how to spell stinkeroony.

My hope is that people will flock to the movie in droves and be so enchanted they'll rush to buy any book with a title similar except for one itsy bitsy vowel, and I'll end up extremely rich. But somehow I doubt it.

Then there's the great autographing dilemma. As you know, I had lots and lots of bookplates printed up, which I sent to any of you who asked (and you know, while I'm whiny and negative, I want to say a couple of times I sent vast amounts of them to schools and never heard that they'd arrived safely, let alone a thank you for sending them). But someone posted on an autograph collecting message board that I did this (and included a picture of the envelope I sent it in to confirm handwriting), and now I'm getting asked on a semi-regular basis for autographs and autographed pictures. And these people don't know my books. Most likely, they've never heard of me. To them, I'm just a sucker with a stamp, and I don't like it. I now doubt every request that comes in, including those that seem perfectly reasonable but also include the desire for an autographed picture.

While I'm on the subject of email, I have other problems as well. For starters, a very good friend of mine had her email address corrupted (and not in an interesting way), and now when I get emails from her, they offer me the option of buying Viagra cheap. And if that weren't bad enough, since yesterday evening, I've gotten emails informing me that I've made donations or purchases by way of Paypal to someone named Bob Retolla. Since I had never heard of Bob Retolla, but who knows what I do in the wee small hours of my sleeping pill mornings, I googled the name and discovered this is a vicious international plot to steal money and IDs from Paypal, and I should never ever follow the link to deny the payments, because once you do that, you're doomed.

Well, I'm doomed anyway, but I hadn't followed the link, so I'm probably okay there. Take that, Bob Retolla. Or rather, don't take that, Bob Retolla.

My current plan is to run away from home and go to the mall this afternoon and see The Social Network and try to return those black jeans I was so excited about to Macy's, because I've washed the jeans 12 times and they still have a nasty smell to them. Well, I'll start with the jeans and then go to the movies.

If Macy's takes them back and The Social Network is as good as I'm certain it will be (no stinkeroony it), then maybe my mood will brighten and I'll start mailing out autographed pictures to my new best friend Bob Retolla!