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http://www.facebook.com/jesselcairns

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Now to something awful, and I only wish I was describing the web site by the same name.  Earlier today I was having a converation via text with mermaidinparis  and she gave me a pep talk by telling me that I was sure to get published soon because, after all, if a version of Jane Austen's boring-as-fuck polemic Pride And Prejudice combined with zombies could be dropped into the local bookstores--

"Wait a second," I said aloud, before remembering she couldn't hear me.  "Wait a goddamn second," I then gagged for my own benefit.  "Okay, this has to be a joke.  After all, she loves zombies as much as I do and this is probably her way of... oh no, oh my God..."

It is not a joke: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies really, really fucking exists.  Reading the Wikipedia entry on the alleged plot of this book (and I had to make several attempts and two alcoholic drinks to successfully navigate the blocks of text that are now seared into my brain with carbolic acid) has now caused me to be aware of several things concerning this project that I desperately wish I could un-see... but as those cute lolcat kitten know all too well, what has been seen cannot be unsaw'd.

1)  Not only does the book contain zombies, it also has ninjas.

2)  It has reached as high as the number three slot on the New York Times bestseller list, further proof that looking to this publication as an indicator on what is good at stirring your literary cauldron is most likely a bad idea... or at the very least, lends a slimy air of legitimacy to this whole fuckfest that makes me want to take several boiling-hot baths, and...

3)  Film rights for the novel have been purchased.

4)  The book is essentially a printed version of the concept pioneered by Steve Oedekerk in Kung Pow: Enter The Fist, for all of you who remember how well that worked out for everybody involved.  I believe I lost the ability to do long division.  Roughly 85% of Austen's book is retained, with the project mastermind (you can break my fingers and I won't call him a writer) inserting his own bits to flesh out the story, as it were.  So not only is this awful, he didn't even spend the time banging out the whole book himself.

You know, I thought it was a horrible literary idea when Stephenie Meyer announced she would be doing another story set in the Twilight-verse where the whole story of the first book was retold except this time from the vamp's perspective, but right now that bout of self-plagiarism looks like the Nobel Prize for Literature.  This is the sort of crack-smoking dreck I expect from the really deranged members of National Novel Writing Month, and the fact that a whole bunch of critics have creamed in their collective jeans praising it makes me uneasily wonder if I have not in fact died and awakened in my own grotesque corner of Literary Hell.  I'm thinking of a quote from Event Horizon...

"Do you see?  Do you see?  DO YOU SEE?"

Yes.  Unfortunately, I see.