Month: April 2006

The other day, I received an e-mail purporting to be from my bank that I suspected, but was not certain, was spam.

I’m relieved, now that I’ve received exactly the same message at another e-mail account, one that my bank would not have on file.

I’m usually pretty good at spotting spam, and I would have called the bank directly rather than respond to the e-mail — much less click any of its links. But I can see how people fall for this kind of thing sometimes. Not all of it is obvious.

I’ve updated the submissions guidelines a little bit over on Kaleidotrope. I’m just saying.

Addendum: I’m getting a fair amount of fiction (of varied quality and length), but not a lot of poetry — and almost no b&w art. So if anyone would like to submit those (or knows where I could advertise), that’d be great. Feel free to pass the word along.

Does it qualify as a shameless plug if I post it here? Is a weblog anything but a shameless plug?

From Warren Ellis — LA Woman Hospitalized With Bubonic Plague:

A woman was hospitalized earlier this month with bubonic plague, the first confirmed human case in Los Angeles County in more than two decades, health officials said Tuesday.

I’m not sure what I find most disturbing here. That a woman was hospitalized with the plague… That “in more than two decades” means that some people were contracting the plague in Los Angeles during ’70s or ’80s… Or that the ’70s and ’80s actually were twenty years ago…

You know, it probably is the whole woman getting the plague thing.

Although I do suddenly have this image of a Monty Python “Bring out your dead”-type scene set to a Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran soundtrack.

Interesting. The Mel Brooks Collection does contain Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but it doesn’t contain Spaceballs or Life Stinks. I mean, I can understand why the set doesn’t include Dracula: Dead and Loving It*, but it is a little odd that it skips those two earlier films — especially since they’re the only other two films Brooks has ever directed. Maybe securing the rights to those two was a problem.

* It’s godawful. I attended a Monty Python Society meeting once, shortly after graduation, where the then president had decided to screen the film. I got there, saw what they were going to watch, and walked right back out the door.