My wife took a phone call from someone who started ranting about his book appearing on this site, dropping f-bombs and generally behaving such as one doesn’t credit to people who consider themselves fully human. (She hung up.)  Caller ID showed it to be from this number, registered to one “Michael Pacione.”

Hmm… Pacione, Pacione… Where have I heard that name before? Oh, right. Here.

He then placed some comments on an unrelated-to-anything post at my personal blog (which were stuck in moderation because he hadn’t commented there before, and there they shall stay), blathering further f-bombs about my being a Mormon.  You see, I believe differently than he does, and that offends him beyond the limits of his paltry self-control.

Seriously, is Nickolaus Pacione scouring his old address book to start new fights with old combatants?  Did his medical plan stop covering his meds?

Nick, old son.  You’re either completely deranged and need to be institutionalized, or you’re deliberately a festering bubo on the anus of humanity.  I’m not ruling out that both are true simultaneously.  You’ve already won the Jackass Of All Internet Award; there’s no need to keep trying so hard.

On having one’s cover show up here:

http://tmikemccurley.com/2015/05/lousy-covers/

At first I was angry (“Those bastards! I hope they get crabs, and then fall in a woodchipper!”). After that came sadness and all those other stupid emotions that one gets when any part of something they did is ridiculed. That’s natural.

But after a couple of minutes, I smiled. Why smiled? Because they were right. That cover was shit. A drunken aardvark missing two toes could have bettered that one. That was the work of someone who had no business designing a cover, who simply wanted to get his writing out there and was too industry-ignorant to think any better.

I’m experimenting with some new ad networks to see which ones can bring useful, contextually relevant ads without annoying the bejeezus out of us all.  You may see some pop-ups, etc. over the next couple of days as I play around. Stay calm; pop-ups annoy me as much as they do you, and I’ll curtail them as soon as I encounter them.  I spend as much time on this site as anyone, after all.

I’ll only mention this once here (lest I be accused of having a “negative business model”), but I thought you’d like to know that I’ve opened a site vending pre-made ebook covers for $30. It’s Thrifty Book Covers, it’s awesome, and I’d appreciate any signal boost.

It’s an idea that I should have thought of: using bad book (and other media) covers as the basis for a commentary-style webcomic. But since I didn’t think of it, Roman Jones did.

Ugly Book Covers. (Warning: Frequent salty language.)