The poison touch, that is. The proverbial brown thumb. It's a reverse midas touch kind of power: everything I touch turns to crap.
It's an awesome and mighty power. I have an uncanny ability to pick losers. Whatever I like, gets the spike. I liked the TV show Firefly. Canceled. FlashForward. Canceled. My Name is Earl. Canceled. Yikes! No more TV for me. I decided that I would wait a few years for the reruns to appear, and spend my time reading books and speaking in tongues to computers as a hobby, instead of watching TV. Although Hollywood heaved a very big sigh of relief, it's just too late for some.
Now writers must face my dangerous attentions. John Biggins was dropped by his publisher. He's self publishing on Amazon.com, poor guy. Even Neil Gaiman can't get R.A. Lafferty reprinted. (Good thing R.A. is now a blessed memory... he'd starve otherwise.) Earlier I reviewed Sara Vowell's book, The Wordy Shipmates, for Skokie Public Library's Winter Reading Whatever-a-thon. Hey, just shoot me, OK? I just wanted to win one of the prizes for my sweetie.
So, today I find in the "Buy Our Discarded Books for $1 Snack Zone Copy Center" section of the library... The Wordy Shipmates. The very copy that I checked out earlier this year and reviewed. With the purple X of death on its spine. The book was just published in 2008, and now in 2011 the library's already binning it for a buck. You know, they still have Erle Stanley Gardiner books printed in 1955 on the shelf, but Sara Vowell gets the axe after three stinking years. I hope she has health insurance.
Screw it. I'm joining the Tea Party. They deserve me. There's just no way I'm going to the OTB, that's for sure.
