When the workers aren’t paid enough also to be consumers, capitalism screws the pooch and the game is over.

EGO EGO EGO
While googling myself to prove I was really real, I came across the following very cool review of The Renquist Quartet by bookslut. I shamelessly pass it on because I am extremely fond of my vampires and would love for them to find a wider audience. They were a little – as they call it – underpublished.

From http://www.bookslut.com/
The final vampire series worth checking out is Mick Farren's Renquist Quartet (which includes The Time of Feasting, Darklost, More Than Mortal, and Underland). Farren, a former rock journalist known for psychedelic sci-fi novels, started the series off with a mostly mainstream horror story of a colony of New York vampires thrown into disarray by internal politics and external hunters. However, with the second book, the series took a turn for the bizarre that had only been hinted at previously, as Farren established vampires (and most other supernatural creatures) as being the result of long-ago alien experimentation on earth. Had he taken the theory too seriously, the books would have come across typical cheesy sci-fi (or a late-series X-Files episode). But since Farren pervades the series with a sense of fun (while never letting the characters themselves be utterly serious about the world in which they live), we end up with a zany yet brutal world in which alien vampires mingle with ancient wizards, in which a vampiric Kurt Cobain and Lovecraft's Cthulhu can be found, and in which Nazi Mole Men and UFOs square off against secret US government immortality projects. At the core, though, the novels are still about Renquist and his crew of vampires as they travel the globe and try to make sense of the insanity. Farren's quartet manages to be a hoot, without ever tripping too far into the "humorous" side of the humorous horror realm.

BITCH BITCH BITCH
And on the subject of reviews of vampire novels, Anne Rice has posted a unbelievably demented defense of herself and her vampires on Amazon, explaining at undignified length how she hasn’t jumped the shark, and apparently blaming a lot of it on her readers. (Unless it’s revealed as a cruel and unusual hoax.) Excerpts...

First off, let me say that this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren't even reading it.

You are projecting your own limitations on it. And this book is most certainly written -- every word of it -- by me. If and when I can't write a book on my own, you'll know about it. And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art.

If this reaches one reader who is curious about my work and shocked by the ugly reviews here, I've served my goals. And Yo, you dude, the slang police! Lestat talks like I do. He always has and he always will. You really wouldn't much like being around either one of us. And you don't have to be. If any of you want to say anything about all this by all means Email me at Anneobrienrice@mac.com. And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans, La, 70130. I'm not a coward about my real name or where I live. And yes, the Chronicles are no more! Thank God!

For the whole tirade go to http://www.amazon.com/ , dial up her new(ish) book The Blood Canticle, and scroll down the reader reviews.

QUOTE TO THE DAY
I still love Maureen Dowd – even though one of Doc’s lady admirers has laughingly threatened to "scratch that redheaded bitch's eyes out!"
"Senator Kerry evoked the voice of Bush 41 to get under 43's thin skin. The more Mr. Kerry played the square, proper, moderate, internationalist war hero, the more the president was reduced to childish scowling and fidgeting, acting like a naughty little boy who refuses to sit in his seat and eat his spinach and do all the hard things a parent wants you to do."

LINKS
Our dazzling pal hipspinster has been out on the razzle...
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

And try this. It’s really worth the effort.
http://wearabledissent.com/101/floridaballot.html

CRYPTIQUE – He’s drunk!

The secret word is Ovoid