Quintelex Objects to Extraterrestrial Profiling

It's not hard to see why Quintelex is upset.

Quintelex is the first extraterrestrial entity to run as a presidential candidate in US history.

It seemed like the Regulan's entrance to the race would successfully show the American commitment to diversity and civility in political discourse.


Then Democrats and Republicans started passing out tinfoil hats to prospective voters.

"It keeps their mind control rays from fusing your neurons,"  they explained as they gave them away, never mentioning Quintelex by name.

Quintelex maintains these election year tactics are a form of profiling.  Both President Obama and Mitt Romney deny this.  President Obama claimed that giving away tin foil hats was just another "unique jobs program developed by his administration.  Someone has to make those tin foil hats," he maintained.  Republican nominee Mitt Romney would only say, "I like shiny things."

Undaunted, Quintelex's team maintains that the tinfoil hats are evidence of polarizing partisan pejorative profiling.

To see if there is any truth to this accusation, this reporter interviewed Dr. Rhebus Downthenose of the Chicago Institute of Annoying Behavior.


"Dr. Downthenose," I asked,  "is focusing on a candidate's planet of birth another form of profiling?"

"You see, you just had to ask that," he shouted and jumped up from behind his desk to double power-fist the air.  "Your kind always does."

"My kind?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, your kind.  Sit down."

He pointed at a chair across from his desk.

I sat.  My kind always did.

"So professor, is it true that the American people are profiling Quintelex just because he's an alien?  If so, does he really have a fair chance?"

"You see, this?"  he asked, holding his right index finger up in the air.  "It is known in certain parts of Detroit as a passage opener, or nose-picker.  Regulans do not have an index finger.  Quintelex therefore cannot pick his own nose.  He isn't like us."

"Why thank you, Dr. Downthenose.  I think that answers my question."

"Where's you tin-foil hat?" he demanded.


"I'll be leaving now," I said as I got up from the chair and edged back toward the door.

His eyes narrowed.


"You have to protect yourself from their mind control rays," he said in a menacing tone.


He rose from the chair slowly; a look of manic intensity flushed his pinched face.


"They bombard us with their thoughts constantly.  They take over our way of thinking.  Always displacing our thoughts with theirs.  You can't hide from them."

I closed the gently but firmly behind me.  From behind the frosted glass I could hear the doctor ranting about how they were always bombarding our minds, displacing our thoughts with theirs.

The thing was, I wasn't sure if he was talking about Democrats and Republicans or aliens.

My cell phone rang.

It was that special ring reserved for out of state political telemarketers.

Constantly bombarding our minds.  Replacing our thoughts with theirs.

Now that I think of it, how much difference is there between the thoughts of politicians and aliens?

Facebook and the Regulan Plan

Regulans are new to US politics.  

In fact, on their planet they don't have politicians.  Quintelex, having just thrown his hat in the ring for the 2012 presidential race, is anxious to be just like any other earth candidate.  So he brought his three key advisers (pictured above) from his home planet of Regula to help get his campaign off the ground.

Their first task was to hire Democratic and Republican operatives to teach Quintelex how to be sarcastic, angry, condescending, and, most important, to lie.

Unfortunately, Regulans are genetically incapable of lying.  President Obama and contender Mitt Romney will be forced to carry that burden alone.  Both seem up to the job, according to the most recent computer analysis conducted by a team of Regulan Tarot Readers.

Since training Quintelex in lying and smear campaigns was ruled out of the question, this allowed Candidate Quintelex's three advisers to concentrate on developing a plan to save the US economy (which will soon have a credit rating lower than most lemonade stands) and restore a sense of fairness and understanding to the American people.  Quintelex was clear in his telepathic instructions- do not develop a plan like either the Democrats or the Republicans.  Neither of these parties is much to write home about- particularly when you live 135 million light years away.

Instead, Quintelex demanded a scientific plan based around what Americans actually do.  Once the Regulan computers figured out what Americans actually do versus what they say they'll do, Quintelex felt discovering a realistic solution would be simple.

And it was.

Today he unveiled the new Regulan Facebook Plan.

If elected president of the United States this year, he will immediately implement this comprehensive plan.  Congressional approval will not be necessary since they will be replaced with Facebook Likes and the new Facebook Don't Likes.

Yes, under the Regulan Plan, Facebook will replace American politics.

No longer will there be such a thing as illegal immigration or legal residency.  Only those people with a sufficient number of likes will be allowed to stay in the country and this could change at any moment based on their Facebook status.

Income will be completely fluid as well, and will be distributed according to the number of Facebook likes an individual has achieved.  Poor people could become wealthy overnight if enough people like them.  Wealthy people could become overnight paupers seeing their income distributed to more popular individuals.

Justin Bieber will, of course, be excluded.


A peculiar aspect of the Regulan Facebook Plan is that plants, animals and imaginary characters would have the same rights as people if they received enough Facebook likes.  The reasoning behind this aspect of the plan was really a nod to American culture.  Quintelex felt that if corporations are considered citizens, trees should be, too.


Some in the media protested that trees should not have citizenship and due process- they're not human.  Then again, neither is Quintelex.

Initial reaction to the Regulan plan was mixed.

Most of his audience were too busy texting to hear him anyway.

Third Party Candidate Enters Presidential Race

Finally a candidate has come forward who can deal with the illegal alien issue.  

More than that, Quintelex (which is only a facsimile pronunciation of his name) is variable bi-gender, thus allowing this new entrant to help the American people to at last rise above gender issues.  On his home planet (somewhere in the fourth knot of string theory)  neither same sex nor opposite sex marriage is possible for obvious reasons.

As a writer, I find Quintelex and his candidacy very interesting.

Unfortunately, the "birther" issue has raised its ugly head.  Quintelex was born during an overnight stop in Kansas in 1892 during the Crop Circle Festival.  No state in the Union knows how to celebrate crop circles like Kansas.  As Donald Trump pointed out yesterday, "Where's the proof?  If he/she is from Regula or Hawaii, it's no matter to me, but he can't run without proof of citizenship."  Mitt Romney has already called for Quintelex to "self-deport" and Barack Obama drove home the point that "You can't keep people out with a border fence when they come from the sky."

Trump hammered home his case.  "If he/she is a legal citizen, where's his/her Facebook page?"

As I writer, I find this really interesting.

Quintelex has a real chance of getting on the ballots come November if the age issue doesn't sink the feisty Regulan's candidacy.  At age 120 earth years, Quintelex would be the oldest US president in the history of the United States.  Efforts by the candidate to date  to explain that 120 years is the Regulan equivalent of 18, have not been able to quiet voter concerns, particularly since Miley Cyrus announced her support of the candidate.

But this newest entrant into the US political fray has one thing going for him that beats Mitt Romney's hair and Barack Obama's singing voice- he can't speak.

Regulans have no vocal cords whatsoever.

Think of it.

A presidential candidate who can't talk.  A presidential candidate we won't have to listen to.

Wow.

This reporter is impressed.

Garden of Eden Found and "Tainted Blood" is Now Available in Print

My werewolf novel "Tainted Blood" is finally available in paperback.  The cover image hasn't loaded yet, but it takes a week or two to show.  Price for the print version is $15.99.

Wait- I sound like an infomercial.  I should throw in some Ginsu knives so I could say, "But wait, there's more."  Then I could throw in a free juicing machine.

If you can't tell I wanted very badly to either write for the world's greatest magazine, "The Weekly World News," or be the lead guy in info-mercials.  I watch re-runs of Orgreenic frying pan presentations, Orek vacuum cleaning commercials, Intensity Workout infomercials and Dance Away the Pounds.

So I'm tempted, really tempted to do a "Tainted Blood" info-mercial.

That way I could do my first "Buy Now!"

I could say "Tainted Blood" is yours right now in three easy payments if you act right now.

Or I could say that if you don't buy, I'll give your number to both political parties and say you love phone calls. Now that's what I call gangsta sales.

Or, I could go back to writing the second in the series, called "The White Death."

First I have to go back and read the classic Weekly World News Classic story "Garden of Eden Found!"  by the brilliant reporter Frank Lake.  Here's an excerpt demonstrating why he should replace Walter Cronkite as America's reporting icon:

“The RMS  (radioactive mass spectrometer) was showing an extremely small dense object 30 feet underground” Colonel Pentine said, “We called in the hazmat team to dig it up.”

Dressed in radiation-proof uniforms, soldiers began excavating the area. What they discovered seemed harmless enough: The withered remains of an ancient tree.

“The bark looked as if it ha been blasted by lightning. Pentine said. “We dug carefully around the trunk and soon unearthed the skeletal remains of a large snake beside the mass we had been reading.

“The object was red and looked like an apple,” she said.

You can see why my childhood dream was to work for the Weekly World News.  Matter of fact, if they called me today, I'd still take the job.

Now You've Done It

Your family and friends were right.

You write about your writing too much.

You spend so much time Facebook spamming the rest of the world about your writing that you missed the call.

No one who works for the government ever answers their phone, so they called you.

They were looking for the insurance carrier that would take care of the damages caused to their saucer by our planet's unmanned spacecraft.  Space is a dangerous place and everybody is supposed to have insurance.  It wasn't their fault that our space probe didn't have enough brains to recognize an intergalactic stop sign.  And now someone has to pay for the replacement dilithium crystals.  So they called you.

But you were so busy writing about your writing on Facebook.that you missed their last peace offering.  They are a peaceful race from a peaceful planet and like to resolve things peacefully.  But, as the designated Earth representative, you were writing about your writing and didn't answer your phone.

What's an alien race with a grudge to do?

Maybe you should take a breather from writing about your writing long enough to realize that the planet's in danger without you.

Or maybe just pay attention to your family and friends.

It's summer, don't you know?

Put away you laptop and your electronic friends and engage in life.  Writers who don't live life to the fullest have no business telling stories to the rest of us.

Besides, we're all still dodging alien death rays because you wouldn't take the call from the planet Regula.

We Found Your Writing Desk

Don't deny it.

It's right there beneath the bike.  It's pinned beneath either the front or the back wheel.  It's kind of hard to tell which.

Or it could be your grandmother.

But I digress.

Some writers are organized and others are not.

I use Microsoft Outlook and turn my characters into Microsoft Contacts.  Then I organize the plot sequence in Microsoft Calender.  And no, this isn't an advertisement for Microsoft.  I'm just saying this is how I do it.

Writer Janrae Frank is an organizational genius.  She uses Scrivener.  It's amazing.  But I'm a creature of habit. and stubborn, too.  So I'm still using Outlook

How  do you organize?

Forget the evidence shown in the picture.

Help the rest of us out.

Tell me how you really organize your stories, your characters, your plot, your timelines and your writing projects.

New Pro-Rate Anthology Call

Thought I'd let you know first that we're actively looking for stories for our new anthology, Airships & Automatons, edited by the always notable Charles P. Zaglanis.  Here are the guidelines as he wrote them up: 

*****

White Cat Publications, LLC. is pleased to presentthe submission guidelines for its first anthology, Airships & Automatons, edited by Charles P. Zaglanis.

Pay: .05 per word first publication/ .01 per word reprint plus a contributor copy of the book. If translations are made, writers will be paid .01 per word and 1 copy for each version.

Format: Trade paperback and eBook.

Deadline: Until filled.

Word count: 5,000 words (preferably).

Setting: We seek steampunk stories featuring strong characters, exciting plotlines, and automatons and/or airships. We don’t want the latter to be mentioned in passing; they should be central to the plot. We aren’t shooting for any particular mood with this book. Dystopian, humorous, pulp, Lovecraftian, upbeat or dark— all have a place here. Please don’t feel constrained to write in a Victorian setting.  It’s steampunk, push the boundaries. We’re looking for that certain flavor of writing that’s hard to explain, but obvious when it’s present.  Like most markets, we aren’t interested in erotica or unnecessary gore (I know, I know. I said push the boundaries, but I’m not cutting the checks).

Submit stories in standard manuscript format to charlespzaglanis@whitecatpublications.com. No snail-mail. No multiple submissions. Word or .rtf only, no .pdf, .wp, etc. Feel free to send another story after rejection. Please type A&A/Your Name in the subject line. I get a lot of email and this will help me keep track.

Best of luck and we’ll see you in the aether,

Chuck Zaglanis

Editor

White Cat Publications, LLC

Going Backward to Meet the Future

All smart people know that you must go backward to move forward.

No one really knows why.

It's enough to acknowledge it.

Art Bell and his successor George Noorey (of Coast to Coast A.M. fame) are both fascinated by time travel.  As a sophisticate of the Inner Lodge of Wowness, I confess that Time Travel is cool stuff.  Shadow People are a major yawn next to Time Travel.  Rod creatures and Chupacabras don't even compare.

Why is time travel so cool?

It's easy enough to understand.  As Immanuel Kant or his third cousin pointed out on more than one occasion, "Oh to go back to where I could wear a hat like that and get away with it."

As a writer, I find it very interesting.

It is the key to all human relationships, I believe.  The need to go back.  The need to restore things to the way they were.  To go forward is to know that you are making a choice that could be wrong.  Ending up with someone that may not be right.

To go forward is to get old.

Grim but true.

And if it's true that fashions cycle back into popularity, think of the trouble we'll all be in before too long.

To be able to travel back into the past means that the past is still there.  That it's not gone forever, that we always have options to change what we did and start fresh.

But it's confusing, so I'm asking you, as a writer, do you use time travel in your stories?  If not, would you?

If you don't know the answer, I'll have to ask the  kid in the picture.

Imagine the answer I'll get.

Rogue River Robots

Sometimes you take the dare, sometimes you run.

 I took the dare.

The dare was to write a novel with the title "Rogue River Robots."

Now I just have to figure out what it's about!

So I'm going UFO hunting  this summer to get some ideas.

I'll keep you up to date with posts and photos.

If I you don't hear back from me- watch the skies...

White Cat Acquires Sams Dot Publishing

I am pleased to announce that Sams Dot Publishing has been acquired by White Cat Publications, LLC. to bring our books and magazines to an even wider readership.  Tyree Campbell, the head of Sams Dot has been retained as the Editor-in-Chief for the Sams Dot imprint and all of the Sams Dot team will be joining the White Cat team.  We welcome them with open arms so that we can continue the creative vision of founder James Baker.

White Cat Publications, LLC. began as online magazine and eBook publisher and the addition of Sams Dot's print magazines and books will complement perfectly our product line.

Join me one and all in celebrating this new development.