I need to do more of this…

 

Another neglected orphan

All writers have orphans. Stories they really liked but somehow never finished. Poems and stories no publisher wanted. Great book proposals rejected by form letter. Published works that died on the shelves without publicity, advertising, or bookstore signings. Then there’s the worst kind. The accidental project that even the writer keeps forgetting about because he thinks he’s bigger than the trifle that always seems to be standing quietly behind the door.

I rediscovered one of this last kind when I was belatedly doing some hard work to revive the life of maybe my biggest orphan, the graphic extravaganza called Shuteye Town 1999.

Shuteye Town is a huge, uncategorizable thing made up of 3,500+ hyperlinked computer graphic files. It’s a place you go and can get lost in, even though everything that happens in there is occurring in the final minute of the 20th Century. It’s a story in which the reader/player is the protagonist of a narrative he creates by the choices he makes about where to go next. You write your own story, as many times as you want, as many different ways as you want. You shop, you ride the subway (48 stations), you drive through town, you hit the nightlife, you watch TV, you browse the Internet, you go to high school and college, you get therapy, you get arrested, you go on trial, you go to prison, you die, and you get sent back to do it all again, because the number of lives you can lose is unlimited. Is that heaven, hell, or purgatory? Your story. You figure it out.

Anyhow. I was constructing a new website to replace three others that site vendors had shoved out of existence by turning ‘free’ into prohibitively expensive. One of the places people can visit and spend a lot of time is in a store (one of 33 at the mall) called Moon Books, where you can browse for reading material of all kinds. If you can get past the police tape…

It can be done if you want it enough. Inside, there’s a lot to choose from.

All the categories can be explored. There’s a long shelf of bestsellers, for example. Many of the books whose titles can be read are also linked to front and back cover reproductions. In the original version there were also links from some of these to text excerpts, which did not survive a conversion to HTML, though they have been available through years by other means. 

You’ll note that the books inside the red box include a ‘Rabbit’ novel (by John Upcreek), a ‘Buchanan’ novel by Bore Vidal, as well as something called ‘Little Good Book.’ The first two had text excerpts now preserved/enhanced elsewhere, while the third was intended to be the only complete book available at Moon Books by text link. Which made it special in its own way. I wrote it at the time and then forgot about it. In fact I didn’t even notice its hiding place here on the bestseller list when I was reviewing it during the site creation for ST99 here at Blogger. It was only when I was looking for a shorthand way of demonstrating just how many books were in the store that I rediscovered a set of image files I’d collected on iPad in years past.

Most of the titles shown were among those that had also had text links. What leaped out at me from this set of pics, though, wasn’t those but the hot pink cover sitting almost at dead center of this image file. Omigod, I thought, Uncle Reg’s Little Good Book! The only way I’d thought of it for several years was as the answer to a trivia question hardly anyone has ever asked me: “Just how many Bibles have you written, R. F. Laird?” The right answer is four. The Boomer Bible, the Zeezer Bible (also in ST99), the Snowflake Bible, and Uncle Reg’s Little Good Book.

So, what was the ‘Little Good Book’? It was a fun little writing project akin to a book(let) called ‘Stupid Rihgts’ that also made it into the Moon Books inventory but whose text has since disappeared completely into the zone occupied by lost socks and cheap sunglasses. Uncle Reg was a nasty old white guy who was strenuously opposed to people in general, regardless of ethnicity. The book consists of what a young fella wrote down of his salty assessments of things and advice for getting by in a world full of, ugh, people.

It was fun to write, brief but somehow comprehensive, and it seemed to deal directly with the very biggest issues in life. When it didn’t show up in my attempts to recover other missing text files, I moved on. 

Then, in 2018, I must have made a serious effort to find the text, because I published a Kindle book whose cover you see up top. My plan had been to publish it on paper in the tiniest size format Amazon allowed, which was 3 1/2” X 5” or something like that, contrasting the grand title with the “little book” fad that seemed to be gripping the market at the time. I wasn’t really hoping to make money. What I really wanted was to hold it in my hand and give copies to the friends I was still speaking to. (Apparently I’m not altogether different from Uncle Reg…). The Kindle price was and is pretty low in these inflationary times.

Then I forgot all about it again. I never look at the dribs and drabs of royalty payments I get from Amazon. If I ever sold one, I don’t know about it. I have a Facebook page and over a dozen sizable websites which all operate without advertising or promotion. Never had the money and I can’t survive all the political correctness hurdles associated with securing marketing assistance through social network and browser vendors. My long term sales plan, pitiful as it might be, is to wait for a change in culture in which young people become actively hostile to political correctness and woke delusions, then start looking for voices like mine; later, when I am sipping absinthe through a straw in my wheelchair at the age of 102, some member of the mass media might notice a mountain of my stuff that is still relevant, thoughtful, and creative, and take credit for discovering me. 

One reason I’ve never been much for tip jars. When I mention them at Facebook, it’s in jest. I have posted about a tip jar here at IPR, but just once and it was expressly not for money but information. I have financial needs associated with trying to save my work from the uncertain future of Internet software services, but I have resorted to GoFundMe on only one occasion. That was to finance a legal attempt to obtain redress for the blatantly unethical and probably illegal destruction of the reputation of a long-dead man I had had as a teacher in prep school. The charges the school levied and publicized extensively against him were sexual in nature, hearsay taken as gospel long after his death and any conceivable statute of limitations , and an obvious attempt to draw praise for correcting a problem every boarding school on earth deals with in some form or another, usually through coverups and silence. My attempts to obtain acknowledgment of the unfairness of the process used against my old instructor were met with stony denial by the school itself, which threatened to sue me personally for defaming the school’s administration. My GoFundMe petition was immediately denied with extreme prejudice because defending a white male accused of sexual improprieties was tantamount to a crime itself.

Why I just keep doing what I’m doing, writing the truth as I see it, with no censors or lawfare vultures looking over my shoulder to mold or silence my opinions.

What does any of this have to do with a throwaway writing project that never really saw the light of day? Here’s what I’m thinking. When I look at the date of Uncle Reg’s Kindle publication, I am now realizing that 2018 was in the same time window as Hillary’s promulgation of the “Deplorables” and “Irredeemables” memes. This seems to be the official launch of the open hatred of white men that has been increasing steadily during the subsequent years of Woke victim gospel and feverishly foul-mouthed namecalling of old white men in particular. I feel belatedly proud that Uncle Reg anticipated that view of curmudgeonly men by saying things that used to be chuckled at and are now used as rationales for imprisonment and murder.

I had to purchase a copy of the “Little Good Book” from Kindle this morning. I’d lost the text once again when I looked for it. But I paid the exorbitant price ($2.99) because I’d had an ‘Animal House’ kind of inspiration.

Here’s my tip jar proposal. Buy your own copies of Uncle Reg’s Little Good Book. Read it, copy-and-paste excerpts you like best and mail them to friends and (un)friends. Quote excerpts in your social network posts, make electronic posters featuring quotes from the Little Good Book. Start virtue signalling about the scripture of the “Deplorables” and “Irredeemables.” Take credit for all the abuse that’s heaped on them/us. If you’ve got more scratch than I do, make a T-shirt or a ball cap promoting Uncle Reg, even get a batch of them and share them with friends.

Or not. 

At the very least, this is a stupid, futile gesture of mine and I’m happy with it. As a final incentive, I’ll give you one more thing for free. The complete Introduction to the book. Read it and then go buy the Great Prophet of Deplorability:

Are we excited yet? Think about it while you listen to the Uncle Reg theme song…

UPDATE JUNE 9, 2025: According to my Amazon page, your response to this post has been quick and impressive. Thank you. Please it keep it going. It used to be, well, last on the list.