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Journal Journal: This May be the Stupidest Celebrity Lie Story Yet

Being on either of Richard Nixon's Enemies Lists, published and broadcast in 1973, became badges of honor to just about everybody mentioned in them. Wikipedia has both lists covered in spades. Columnist Mary McGrory (#20 in the original) said it was the nicest thing that ever happened to her, etc. Highly acclaimed director and comedian David Steinberg decided to broadcast his appearance on the list too, around 2002. This has been the center point of many of his interviews since, his biograph

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Journal Journal: Speaking at PhreakNIC

I am scheduled to speak at PhreakNIC in Nashville on Halloween evening. Topic is how FOIA is sometimes worthless, so I learned to use The Vault. I am not sure how often they update the speakers section, but I should be in there sometime soon.

User Journal

Journal Journal: David Brinkley's FBI File

I've been submitting FOIA requests for various things related to a book project for over a year now, and most were rejected. They accepted my request for David Brinkley's file and the disk arrived today. Here is the result, lots of cool info but nothing for my project, lol. Seems like a few people wrote the FBI inquiring if he was a Communist through the years, and a woman tried an extortion att

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Journal Journal: The FBI is a PITA

Yes, government as a whole is too but the FBI is especially a pain. For a book project, I did a few FOIA requests that I've mentioned various places. They will not even supply information that they have released in the past, but is no longer available through their regular publications, and they use "the person in question is still alive" as their catch-all denial mechanism. Including denying requests for FBI wanted posters of a guy who is still at large.

Comment Re:heh (Score 1) 2

I wish I could remember the order the songs came in the movie. Figured that would be easy enough to find later, but nope, the "Awesome Mixtape" album is decidedly not in movie order and I can't find the actual order online yet either. Guess I need to go see it again in 3D and take notes :)

Comment Re:Controlling prices? (Score 1) 192

Self-published books are looked down on for a reason. I've "bought" some self-published stuff for $0 on amazon. It's pretty bad. It's basically as if the author had an idea for a story, put it down on paper, and submitted the pdf. The stories have potential sometimes, but the writing is just bad. A mix of short 4 word sentences and half a page run on sentences. Descriptions that are just repeated every several pages. Whole books written in the format of: I walked through the door. I looked at the guy. I said this. He said that. I walked back to the other place. I shot the alien. I picked him up. The alien was gross and ugly. I carried him back to the first place.

Just because you self-publish doesn't mean you don't need an editor.

Be that as it may, those are not the people we are talking about here. The topic is published authors at particular publishing houses whining about the retail price placed on their books. Books which they could have easily published, using exactly the same words, without a "publisher."

Comment Controlling prices? (Score 2) 192

Any author can publish nearly anything he wants through Kindle electronically, or CreateSpace in paper and he has control of the price at either one. Both have competitors too, like LightningSource, that have better access to dirt-world bookstores and provide electronic publishing services. If these authors want to be paid more per book, there is not a blessed thing stopping them from doing it right now.

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