Giando Sigurani's Online Empire

Before I say anything, let's get down to business.

BAM. Business concluded. 

This amazing cover was brought to you by the amazing and talented Alex Pelyre. You might recognize him as the one who provided that excellent drawing at the end of my post about how Katniss Everdeen is not nearly as cool as Briar Wilkes. I reached out to him for a cover comission for the re-launch of Mister Mercury, and after much haggling on my end and much patience on his, this excellent piece of art came out. I couldn't be more pleased. 

The Mister Mercury re-release is still going as planned, though you might not have noticed for the completely understandable reason that I haven't said a goddam thing about it. Well that's one of the reasons this website has been so dark lately. Now you know. 

More details soon, but of course, I can't tell you much more. Mitchell Royce, play me out. 

There are some days when I am forced to take a few steps back from my work and say, “You know, that was shit. That was certainly, definitely, feces.”

Sometimes even I admit that I need to take down the negativity a few notches. My last post is a prime example. I attempted to be clever but only came off as a hysterical, reactionary, bile-spewing shrew. You would never guess that I actually enjoyed the movie, would you? Of course not. I didn't say a single positive thing about it. All in the name of humor, which I also mostly failed at.

So while I retreat into the black folds of my mind for some soul-searching and introspection, here are some love letters that I got from a strange Italian woman and their accompanied translations. Special thanks to my friend Monica for those translations. Yes, I may have an Italian name but I don't speak a word of it. Also, I'm actually Hispanic. I've got what I call Al Madrigal syndrome: I may look white, but I'm actually Latino. So I get the unfortunately-won perks of straight white male privilege from our patriarchal neo-racist society, but I also get to cash in on that sweet, sweet Affirmative Action money. I know how awful that sounds but I already feel bad enough just by existing.

These letters get bonus points, because it inspired the person translating them to become a licensed sex therapist, for which she has just received her certification overseas. Congratulations Monica! This post is for you.

Listen.

I know I am prone to making grandiose statements, but this one, while particularly gigantic in its grandioseness, is probably very true. I will not deign to think that I know everything about you, or indeed anything at all about you. I'm only going to tell you what I know.

And what I know is that I probably like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a whole lot more than you do.

I'm not saying that I know more about it than you do, (even though that is probably true!) I'll just say that there's a good chance that I enjoy it, that I adore it, that I hold it in esteem far higher than than you do, more, likely, than any being on Earth capable of holding things in states of esteem, be they high or otherwise.

Many moons ago, I posted a link to my short story, The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower, to the “humor” section of reddit. It was the first link that I posted to the site, and it went off like a rocket. I got thousands of hits overnight and tumultuous, bountiful praise. I was excruciatingly excited. I immediately fired up a follow-up post thanking the wonderful beautiful people who shared my story with one another and promised to keep an eye out for anything with my name on it.

I said that there would be news about Mister Mercury, and then my website went dark for months without word of anything because my job dropped the Overtime Hammer on me, and I also lost all will to write due to the publishing situation involved with, well, Mister Mercury.

Apologies. I was working on a post, but then I got caught up with all this non-post fiction writing, you see. I had a seven-page post about my publishing situation in the works, but I put it on hold since the process of crafting it made me so very, very misreable. So I turned to my beloved fiction instead, which of course I can't put here. A flimsy excuse, I know, but it will have to do. I ran out of ideas for one of the novels I was working on, but, luckily, I had two backup novels in the works, and found out that I had a flood of ideas for each of them. Is working on three books at the same time something that only hacks do? I don't know.

In the mean time, here is a link to the trailer for that one movie I'm in, where I play a homeless person, a crazy person, a bar patron, and guy-who-hangs-around-in-backrounds-a-bunch-and-has-bad-hair.

The trailer's pretty entertaining, at least.

Today is Cinco De Mayo. It's a holiday. I know this because the bus did not come this morning, so I had to ride my bike all the way to work and, therefore, I made it there fifteen minutes early. Buses in Oregon are- somehow, despite being powered by diesel engines and legally able to drive in the street- slower than any alternative method of transportation you can possibly choose in any given circumstance. Buses will always be the slowest and worst way to get there. I think it has something to do with time dilation. Things that are driven by maddening bureaucratic robots are apparently going to be slower than things that are not, every time.

Yesterday was May the Fourth. It's not a holiday, but apparently it means something to a certain subculture of nerds. It's Star Wars Day. The day in the year when I'm reminded of George Lucas' contributions to the world and and have no choice but to give thanks to the fact that, while my circumstances may seem grim at times, and my contributions to the world appreciated less than I'd like them to be, at least I'm not also a Star Wars fan.

Things I Did While Waiting For My 2006 Dell Computer to Scan a 160 GB Hard Drive and Copy its Recovered Contents to a Flash Drive:

-Slept for 12 Hours
-Finished the last 5 chapters of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
-Wrote 10 pages of an upcoming short story/novella/novel/whatever
-Watched 2001: A Space Odyssey
-Watched 2 parts of a Richard Feynman lecture about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
-Screamed in anguish for 20 straight minutes
-Achieved Enlightenment
-Did my laundry