This is less of a worry than the giant pile of spam building up in my (uh, embarrassingly) several email accounts. Sorry, I should have said giant STEAMING pile of spam.
Archive | Monkeys!
Furious George
Angry monkey with a chaingun. I’ve been there.
Alltop would never give a weapon to a lower primate. From Otipess.
Contest: extended to September 9th!
Don’t miss this opportunity to win a walk-on role in my next book, which I’ve extended a couple days past Labour Day. All you have to do is sign up for The MonkeySphere, my monthly newsletter, or join my Facebook page, and you could win:
- a chance to appear in a walk-on role in my next book
- a chance to win one of three copies of Marvellous Hairy, a novel in five fractals
- the exciting chance to have a “mystery” item from my desk sent to you.
Even better, join both — you’ll double your chances, and anyone who signs up for the MonkeySphere will get $2 off Marvellous Hairy. More details here.
Do it now, because the contest closes soon!
Alltop is waiting to procrastinate.
Contest: win a role in my next novel
Don’t miss this opportunity to win a walk-on role in my next book, which is nearing completion. All you have to do is sign up for The MonkeySphere, my monthly newsletter, or join my Facebook page, and you could win:
- a chance to appear in a walk-on role in my next book
- a chance to win one of three copies of Marvellous Hairy, a novel in five fractals
- the exciting chance to have a “mystery” item from my desk sent to you.
Even better, join both — you’ll double your chances, and anyone who signs up for the MonkeySphere will get $2 off Marvellous Hairy. More details here.
Alltop tried to join three times!
Ask General Kang: What is the penalty for plagiarism on your planet?
Plagiarism is the “act of stealing the ideas and/or expression of another and representing them as your own,” though I can’t remember where I got that quote from — just Google it for the source.
On my home planet of Neecknaw, this is not only an academic offence, but it is also a capital crime.
This stems from the days of Kargnak the Betrayed, one of the great warlord monkey rulers of the ancient days. Legend has it that Kargnak was an impressionable young screen-writer before he became the first in a long line of bloodthirsty intergalactic conquerors from the Planet Neecknaw.
As it happens, he wrote a promising screenplay called, “Planet of the Hairless Hominids”, about a dystopic future in which all good Neecknabian chimps were ruled by self-absorbed, ecologically retarded hominids he styled “humans”. (We had yet to discover the Milky Way Galaxy and your backwards corner of it in those days.) A producer showed some interest in it, but alas, did not buy the manuscript.
And wasn’t Kargnak surprised when the next summer, “Planet of the Humans” appeared at his local Chimpaplex? It was a huge hit, and made millions, and was (of course) based entirely on Kargnak’s original screenplay. He didn’t see a single banana skin for it, and thus Kargnak gave up the writing game for the bloodthirsty and cruel warlord business. At which he was moderately successful, taking over all of Neecknaw and some of our neighboring planets.
Actually, he didn’t give up writing completely, as he penned the Kargnakian Code, which for the first time set out all of our laws in a logical and ordered way. Under the Kargnakian Code, plagiarism is a capital crime, and the condemned are put to death by having all their hairs plucked out (very painful when you’re covered with them), then having a thousand unpublished writers slicing them with the sharpest paper they can find, while lemons are crushed in a massive press above them made of all unpublished writer’s manuscripts. Oh, and hot pokers are inserted wherever paper cuts cannot be administered.
Good god, that’s horrible! What about self-plagiarism?
Self-plagiarism is style, baby. (*)
Next time: What should I say when my girlfriend asks me, “what are you thinking”?
*) Alfred Hitchcock said this defending repetition of his filming techniques in the London Observer, 8 Aug., 1976. Actually, he said “self-plagiarism is style.”
Alltop is 100% original. Originally published November, 2008.
Your chance at immortality, books, and random crap!
Hell yes, we’re going to do this again. This is a contest in which you may be able to win:
- a chance to appear in a walk-on role in my next book
- a chance to win one of three copies of Marvellous Hairy, a novel in five fractals
- a “mystery” item from my desk.
Now, if you’ve entered, or think you will, this is an excellent time to start thinking about how you would like to appear in my next book. Actually, to say next book is to narrow it down too much. I’m currently at work on two books; both are satires (naturally). One is a speculative fiction, the broad theme of which is artificial intelligence, and the other is a historical fiction — or rather, a gentle send-up of the kinds of historical fictions that win Booker and Giller Prizes on a regular basis.
You can put yourself in either book. Almost anything goes. You can appear as yourself — with your name attached, or as a pseudonym. Or your cameo can be somewhat fictionalized. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to be a pirate. Or maybe a ninja. (I hope not, but there’s no accounting for tastes.) Maybe you’d like to be a character with an extra appendage. Almost anything goes, as long as we can work it into the story in a way that doesn’t completely destroy the structural integrity of the novel.
So, what do you imagine you’d like to do with this opportunity? Feel free to share here.
Still want to enter? Join my fan page or my newsletter (sign up for both to double your chances). You have until midnight, August 31st!