An Open Letter to Philip Roth

Dear Philip,

I haven't read much of your work, but I hear you're a pretty fine writer.  I finally got around to reading Portnoy’s Complaint (It only took me forty five years), and I'm not so sure.  To your credit, you wrote some seriously beautiful sentences about splooge, but other than you jerking off, not much happened.  What was the point of that book?  To show people how much you like to jerk off?   They say to write what you know, so I guess you don't get out much. 

The Oiliest Secret Chapter 7 And Dinonsaur Ghost Chapter 5: the Secret is Revealed

Dinosaur Ghost has been revised.  
Dinosaur Ghost is now available for free as a pdf!

Warning!  Human beings and other animals with higher order thinking skills WILL find this chapter extremely offensive.  If the acts described were possible they would almost certainly be illegal. 

Oh and for this to make sense, you should probably read Dinosaur Ghost Chapter 4.   More links to previous chapters can be found at the bottom of this page.   

The parade of nitwits stopped the van outside of the museum of natural history.  Billy thought the museum might have a map they could use to find Jenna.

Review: This Land is My Land, the Mitt Romney Story

This Land is My Land: The Mitt Romney Story
by Mitt Romney
Diamond Publishing, 275 pages
Reviewed by Al Butterman

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  My mother thought silver was pedestrian.  Gold was considered gauche.  Finally, she settled on plain old platinum.”

The Zombie Bocephus Chapter 1

Chapters now being posted at http://zombiebo.blogspot.com/

They never should’ve killed me.  I never was a saint, but I had my good qualities--I can’t think what they are right now, but I know I didn’t deserve a bullet to the brain.  Sure, I harbored a few indecent thoughts in my time—I coveted my fair share of asses, that’s for sure, and I did a lot of drugs. I chased a few dragons in back alleys, and smoked crack behind more than a few dumpsters.  Who hasn’t?  But that's all behind me now.  I’ve been clean for almost six months—ever since they dug my ass out of a shallow grave.

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter Four:The Oiliest Dinosaur Ghost

Dinosaur Ghost has been revised.  
Dinosaur Ghost is now available for free as a pdf!

“Gentlemen,” the professor said.  “The information you will receive here today is not to leave this room.” His eyes slowly panned across a small sea of white faces wearing constipated expressions.  He scratched his chin through a layer of Santa-white beard.  “It is a secret that has spanned millions...” he coughed, cleared his throat, “I mean six thousand years.” 

An Open Letter to Stephanie Meyer

Dear Stephanie,

Have I got an idea for you!  But before I get to that, let me just tell you how much your books have inspired me.  Before I read Twilight, I was planning to like totally have sex and everything, but the book changed my life.  I now plan to wait until I meet the perfect 104-year-old high school student .  If Bella can do it, so can I.

Review: The Oiliest Secret

The Oiliest Secret
By Christamar Varicella
Greasy Bottom Press in conjunction with the Daily Brass
31 pages so far
Reviewed by Sally Putterman


The world of self-publishing reached a new low recently when Christamar Varicella (if that is his real name, and it isn’t) self-published his so-called romance novel parody, The Oiliest Secret.  Mr. Chickenpox, as I call him, no doubt provided himself with a great deal of amusement with his latest venture, but I, for one, am not amused.  I am not amused at all.  Do you see me laughing?  Of course you don’t.  You can’t.  And you won’t.  And you’ll continue to not see me laugh until I get my hands on the Comics section of the Sunday paper and I can feast my eyes on The Family Circus and put this dreaded disease of a man and his pathetic fake novel behind me forever.  Also, I hate him.  There.  I said it.  

The Oiliest Secret Chapter Six: Unfettered Boobs

They financed their quest with Alec Baldwin’s credit card. Bi-Ju-Ju had swiped it on the last day of his stay in Uncle Alec's Malibu guest house as a kind of parting shot to the man who had let him live rent free for more than three months. If not for the fact that he’d also devoured the famous actor’s flower garden, he might still be living in the lap of luxury rather than tooling around America with an angry Postmaster General.

“I smell roses,” C Everett Koop Jr. announced as he steered the van into the parking lot of a Circle K. “Damn it, Billy. Did you expel gas?”

A Highly Offensive Open Letter to David Foster Wallace Featuring a Daniel Tosh Rape Joke*

An Open Letter to Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Tom Wolfe, An Open Letter to Dave Eggers, An Open Letter to JK Rowling, An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy, A Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dear David,

Before I start comparing depression to herpes, I feel I should mention the recent controversy involving the comedian Daniel Tosh.  It seems he thought it was funny to say a woman in his audience should be raped.  Now, I’m not one take any subject off the table when it comes to making jokes--in fact I came up with a rape joke of my own, and here it is: What’s the least funny thing about rape?  Answer: Daniel Tosh--but the whole controversy raises an interesting question: what subjects are OK to makes jokes about and which subjects are taboo? 

Review: Past Time

Review: Foxes and Chickens, An Allegory, Review: A Bug Story, Review: The Girl Who Smelled Like Cheese, Review: The Supreme Bean, Review: Politics Shmolitics, Review: Blood Bites

Past Time
Phillip McGruder
Iconoclast Publishing
313 pages
Reviewed by Al Butterman

50 Shades of Sex, A Parody

My roommate, Kacie, stood in the center of the room, decked out in pajamas, her nose bright red with tissue papers protruding from each nostril.

The Oiliest Secret Chapter Five The Oiliest Death Match: Postmaster Koop J. VS Billy Baldwin Jr. Jr.

Postmaster General C. Everett Koop Jr., a.k.a. The Postmaster., was more than just the postmaster general. In his long illustrious career, he had also been a chess grandmaster, a ringmaster for Barnum and Baily’s Circus, a master of ceremonies at various public and private events, a karate master, a rapper known as Jam Master Koopy Doop in the rap group, The Masters, and he’d been named both Grand Bass Master and Master Baiter at the World Bass Fishing Championship in Springfield, Maryland. Pretty much anything attached to the term master had been mastered by The Postmaster. There was only one thing left for The Postmaster to master, or more correctly, to re-master, and that was his former lover, Jenna Strumpet.

An Open Letter to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

An Open Letter to Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Tom Wolfe, An Open Letter to Dave Eggers, An Open Letter to JK Rowling, An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy, A Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac

A number of troubling reports have come out lately regarding Gabo's health.  The Daily Brass sends its best wishes to the master and his family.  Here's a post from a few years ago.

Hey old man!  You did it!  I can’t believe it!  I bet you are walking tall down in Macondo, my friend!  When I picked up a copy of your book while thumbing through the used book section down at my local Amazon book store and I saw that little round sticker on the cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude announcing your incorporation into the world’s biggest book club, my grin could not be contained.  Seriously, my lips and pearly whites extended past my ears and swelled my head like a big ‘ole balloon. At that moment my happiness turned to helium and lifted my body up to the ceiling. 

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter Three: Dinosaur Ghost VS the Monkey Man Monster

This story has been revised.  For the latest version, see below.
Dinosaur Ghost is now available for free as a pdf!

“Let me get this straight,” Ellen Bellevue said condescendingly to the young man trembling before her desk. “You think prehistoric monsters are eating conservatives.”

Review: A Bug Story

Review: Foxes and Chickens, An Allegory, Review: The Girl Who Smelled Like Cheese,

Review: The Supreme Bean, Review: Politics Shmolitics, Review: Blood Bites

A Bug Story: The True Story of a Man and his Love of Insects

Eight-legged Press

754 Pages

Reviewed by Sally Putterman

Warning. Reading A Bug Story is like being struck by a cataclysm: the earth shakes, your worldview changes, and nothing in your life will ever be the same.  It’s more startling than the first time you read the Bible, or Catch 22, or when that crate of Encyclopedias fell off a truck and landed on your grandmother.  It’s one of those books where, after you finish reading it, you turn back to the first page and start it again, and then when you finish reading it a second time... you go get something to eat... but after that, you read the book a third time, and you keep reading it over and over until one day you look up and find out three months have gone by and your husband has moved out and you no longer have a job and everyone thinks you're crazy.  So what do you do? It doesn’t matter because you still have the book, so you read it again and again and then after about the seventeenth reading, the narrative becomes so ingrained in your mind, you run out and join a cult espousing the views and virtues expressed within the book.  It’s sort of like Ayn Rand, but less self-centered, and with cockroaches.

The Oiliest Secret: Chapter Four - Desert Heat

When Jenna walked out of the gas station restroom, she found herself in a terrible predicament. “Where’s my bus?” she asked no one in particular, though, as it happened, an old man was sitting in a nearby rocking chair smoking a pipe.

Too Weird

A jealous young man plots to kill his grandfather's dachshund. A pair of conjoined twins have differing opinions on whether or not to separate. A hypochondriac writer is faced with the decision of either finishing his magnum opus or going to the hospital to treat a spider bite. A young man suffering through a mental breakdown takes refuge with the blue whale in his bathtub. Too Weird is a collection of seven short, darkly humorous stories by Christamar Varicella. 

The book is free today at the kindle store. 

http://www.amazon.com/Too-Weird-ebook/dp/B008J3A8TS/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1341931134&sr=8-8&keywords=too+weird Trolls Wanted, the new children's picture book by David Brasfield and Christiana Helgeson hits the kindle store today and will be free tomorrow. As of tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future, all books linked to on the right of this page will be 99 cents!

An Open Letter to Tom Wolfe

An Open Letter to Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Dave Eggers, An Open Letter to JK Rowling, An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy, A Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dear Tom,

How are you?  I am fine.  I must say, though, I’m a little miffed you haven’t answered my letter of the 25^th in which I inquired about apparent inconsistencies between the “gangbang” scene in your book, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the one in Hunter S. Thompson’s, Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.  Something tells me (and it’s the Hells Angels book) that the rape scene didn’t take place at Ken Kesey’s ranch in La Honda as your book maintained, but at another party attended by the Hell’s Angels and not the Merry Pranksters.  I’m not upset though.  It was rude of you not to return my letter, but I understand why you would shy away from such a sensitive topic.  You probably assumed that after forty years no one would catch your mistake, or perhaps you thought no one would waste valuable time on so trivial a matter.  Well, you were wrong! 

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter 2: Dangerous Emissions

This story has been revised.  For the latest version, see below.
Dinosaur Ghost is now available for free as a pdf!

As Rock Benson travelled home from work in the back of his 28-foot stretch Hummer, he swirled his martini and smiled. He eased down into the relaxing cauldron that constituted his Hummer’s hot tub. Thirteen months had passed since his successor, the network’s number one rated pundit, Herman Bainbridge, had been annihilated in a tragic accident, but since that time, Rock’s career had soared. Tonight’s episode of his show perfectly illustrated the reason for this upward trajectory. He closed his eyes and the show appeared against the backdrop of his eyelids in transcript form.

Rock: Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Rock Benson, and you’ve hit Rock Bottom. Tonight we have two special guests, each representing an opposing view on the existence of a controversial topic. Is Global Warming real or is it liberal bunk? We’ll present both opinions and then let you decide. First up is Professor Jeffrey Silvermeyer, head of the climate science department at Harvard University. He thinks global warming is real. Thanks for being here, Mr. Nerdelmeyer. Tell us your opinion.

You Think You Know Tough?

Frank McCrackin was the toughest S.O.B. I've ever known. He was the only person to serve in the Army Rangers, the Navy Seals, and the Marine Corp Show Choir all at the same time. He served two tours of duty in Korea, three tours in Vietnam, and four tours in Disney on Ice. He played Goofy, the toughest S.O.B. in the magic kingdom.        

The Oiliest Secret Chapter 3: Greyhound to Sexville

Jenna knew riding the bus would be unpleasant, but she was totally unprepared for the pungent aroma that now pummeled her senses. With furrowed brows and wriggling nose, she turned her head from side to side, searching out the offending odor that seemed to be all around her at once. That’s when she noticed the scruffy gentleman sitting next to her. He wore a beat-up olive-green army jacket and a navy blue toboggan pulled down to his ears. His face was black with a combination of dirt and five o’clock shadow. Jenna leaned in close and sniffed.

“You stink,” she said.

An Open Letter to Dave Eggers

An Open Letter to Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Tom Wolfe, An Open Letter to JK Rowling, An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy, A Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dear Dave,

I know you think you’re great because you wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but I wrote an episode of Pound Puppies, and you don’t see me bragging.  And it was an awesome episode!  You may have seen it.  It was the one in which a stray hound gave all the other dogs worms.  I called it “A Heartbreaking Case of Staggering Worms.” 

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter One: They're Real!

This story has been revised.  For the latest version, see below.
Dinosaur Ghost is now available for free as a pdf!

“Aigggh!” Herman screamed. He sat bolt upright before his eyes had time to open. His pajamas were drenched in sweat.
Lita leaned over, put a hand against his chest. “What is it, Honey?” she asked.

“Aigggh!” Herman Bainbridge screamed again.

“It’s OK, Sweetie. It was just another dream.”

“It wasn’t. It was real. I saw it.”

“It wasn’t real.” Lita’s voice was soft and soothing. “There are no such things as dinosaurs.”

An Open Letter to J.K. Rowling

Dear Ms. Rowling,

First of all, let me say how much I loved your books, and not just the Harry Potter books, but also the new one--I forget what it’s called, but whatever it is, I loved it!  You are the greatest writer who ever lived, and I’m not just saying that because I have a favor to ask you; I really mean it.

A Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac

An Open Letter to Jack Kerouac

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

TDB: Jack Kerouac. Wow. Thanks for joining us live via the internet. It’s great to have you here.

JK: No problemo.

An Open Letter to Jack Kerouac

Previously apppeared at Pig in a Poke
See also A Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac, An Open Letter to Tom Wolfe, An Open Letter to Dave Eggers, An Open Letter to JK Rowling, An Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy


Dear Jack,

Thanks for responding to my ad on Craigslist. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to trade work with a fellow wordsmith of your caliber. We writers are often left to our own devices, locked in our little holes, typing away, and too often we lose touch with the great wide world around us. It's so wonderful to exchange ideas with a talent near to my own.  It is my sincere hope that we might both use this opportunity to improve our skills.  You may be new to this game, but as a veteran of writers' workshops, I promise to offer only the most constructive criticism that I know you will be able to absorb and use to your benefit.  And don't you worry about criticizing my work.  I've developed a pretty thick skin in the year or two that I've been writing. My work is pretty advanced, but if you do think of any criticisms, don't hesitate to spell them out.

Review: The Girl Who Smelled Like Cheese

Review: Foxes and Chickens, An Allegory, Review: A Bug Story, Review: The Supreme Bean, Review: Politics Shmolitics, Review: Blood Bites

The Girl Who Smelled Like Cheese

By Björn Jörgensörn

Umlaut Press 562 pages

Reviewed by Christamar Varicella


Once again, the Swedish novelist Björn Jörgensörn has produced a compelling thriller destined to top the best seller lists for many months to come.  Like his first two novels, The Girl Who Played in Traffic and The Girl Who Picked Her Nose, the story centers on Günter Pflefferkvisktshhheek, a dumpy middle-aged reporter who finds himself embroiled in a constitutional crisis that could bring down the government.  It seems a former prime minister has been manipulating the secret police into helping him molest a thirteen-year-old autistic computer hacker named Elizabeth Salamander, and only Pflefferkvisktshhheek, his part-time lover and former boss, Tersa Bloomgärten, his police detective sister, a half a dozen members of the justice department, another (nicer) former prime minister, a Brazilian wrestler named Räul Tomlinson, and the cast of Swedish Happy Days, can help bring the villains to justice.