brautigan's toothbrush

I am the proud owner of prissears.com, which is hosted by bluehost. It’s my own domain, I have my own web site there and some development sites I am working on for other people.

I was surprised to receive a letter yesterday from Domain Registry of America (www.droa.com) telling me my domain name was about to expire and that I had to renew it with them. What is going on here? These people don’t hold my domain name, which isn’t expiring right now. Why are they asking me for money?

I’ll tell you why – they are trying to steal control of my domain name!  It’s a scam known as “domain-slamming.” They scraped my contact info from bluehost and are trying to trick me and rip me off.

How do they get away with this? That’s a good question – they have been ripping people off for at least the last 8 years but are still going strong. Here’s the wikipedia page about them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Registry_of_America

Here’s the FTC page about them being barred in 2003 from these practices (doesn’t seem to have stopped them!) http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.shtm

They are still in business and still ripping people off. I’m reporting them to the FTC, (https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/)  for what good it may do me.

Here is a 5MB PDF of the letter they sent me. The long page of tiny type includes such knee-slappers as “If we are sued or threatened with lawsuit in connection with Service(s) provided to you, we may turn to you to indemnify us and to hold us harmless…” and “In the event of a charge back by a credit card company…We will reinstate your rights to and control over these Services solely at our discretion, and subject to our receipt of the unpaid fee(s) and our then-current reinstatement fee, currently set at $200(US Dollars).”

In other words, “If you send us money and then realize you’ve been ripped off and stop the charges, we’ll hold your domain name hostage until you cough up $200.” And “Don’t bother trying to sue us because we say you can’t.”

Take-home message: there are companies out there that only exist to try to rip you off. Be skeptical. If you get come-ons like this in the paper mail or your email, report them to the FTC and do not send them any money.

If you have already been ripped off by these people, my sympathies. Unless you spend a lot of money it may be a long while before you own your domain name again. Report them to the FTC, the Better Business Bureau, and try calling the contact info on bottom of this FTC page.

When I have to use someone else’s computer, I’m always shocked by the spinning, flashing, annoying ads and other cruft. How can you stand it? I am used to a more peaceful web experience. You, too, can have an ad-free web! If you use Firefox, here’s how to do it – install two little add-ons and enjoy the serenity. Netflix ads? Gone! “Yellow teeth” ads? Gone! Weight loss, Roomba, AccuQuote “If you died today your children will be weeping penniless on your headstone!” allll gone!

Without further ado, meet my favorite add-ons for Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 This is Adblock – when it installs, it will ask if you want to use a filter set, go ahead and say yes and it will automatically filter out most ads you encounter. If something still slips through, you can right-click it and you should get the option to “hide” it and it’ll disappear like magic.

You can “whitelist” sites (allow them to show ads) once you get the add-on installed.  Look at the bottom right of your Firefox window and right-click the red dot to get to those settings.

http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ Flashblock – replaces all Flash files with a “play” button you can click if you want to see the Flash file.

Caveats – some sites require Flash to work. If you find a site is not working the way you think it should, go to Tools/Add-ons and disable them and restart Firefox. I have to do this a couple times a year. But you’ll quickly find how much you miss the add-ons, and quickly re-enable them.

Not the fabulous South Korean horror/comedy movie of the same name, this is the new book from Stephanie Meyer. If Robert Heinlein had page-counts like Stephen King, and rose from the grave to re-write The Puppet Masters as a romance, this might be the book he would have ended up with.

Not having read the sparkly-vampire series, but having heard lots about it, I was not sure what to expect from Ms. Meyer’s “first book for adults.” It turned out to be the perfect book to read on a sick day, with snow and sleet falling outside. Perhaps overly long at over 600+ pages in hardcover, it was still a quick read. The main theme of the story was similar to the vampire stories – impossible love. “He’ll never love me, I’m a parasitic alien controlling his beloved girlfriend’s body! Perhaps if I try really hard and am a perfect saint, he will learn to love me the way I love him.” Seriously, that is pretty much the way it goes.

Passes the Bechdel test, presuming multiple women in one body count, as the infesting alien and her host converse constantly throughout the book, mostly about guys but also about staying alive in a post-alien-invasion world. Meyers is an effective world-builder – the theme of alien parasites isn’t a new one, but she has her own unique twists. The aliens are peaceful and even beautiful when seen outside their host bodies.

It might be an allegory – the peace-loving aliens feel justified in taking over the entire human race since the humans are so vicious and murderous to each other and the rest of the planet. Is Meyers making some point about gun control? If you let the pacifists take the guns away, the whole world will be full of boringly nice alien Democrats?

Eventually our main character alien becomes a self-sacrificing hero and probably saves the human race. It’s left wide open for a sequel or three, although it’s hard to imagine girls getting worked up about the main male love interest characters, they are both kind of jerks. Meyers seems to have a bit of a “young-woman/older-man” fetish going on here, so maybe that will attract the younger set. It’ll be harder to make your eyes shine silver than to make your skin glitter!

Who could resist science fiction with a title taken from Yeats and a cover depicting a Godzilla-like creature menacing a Rising-Sun-rayed skyline?

This melancholy wisp of a novel, only 170 pages in softcover, is the latest from James Morrow, lauded by some as the greatest sci-fi satirist currently writing. On the surface, it seems like a comedic noir satire, starring a 1940’s monster-movie actor, but the framing of the book as a memoir written on yellow legal pads turns out to be quite sad.

The story traces the alternate-universe origins of Godzilla (known as “Gorgantis” in this tale) as a secret WWII weapon the US has developed in parallel with the bomb. You’ll have to read the book to find out why the US government would need a B-movie actor to inhabit a flame-breathing lizard suit to defeat the Japanese.

I’m not particularly religious, but I’m a sucker for good books about the war between heaven and hell and the folks caught in between. This is a quality entry in that tradition.

I admit, I noticed the William Gibson blurb on the cover. I like Gibson and if he’s that enthusiastic about it, I figured I could give it a try. I was a little leery of Gibson’s characterization of it as a “dirty-ass masterpiece” – what does that mean? But I took the chance, and really enjoyed the book.

The thank-you to Tom Waits in the Acknowledgments, for permission to use lyrics, also gave me high hopes. The last time I saw someone thank Tom Waits for such permission was in a Kinky Friedman book, and it was pretty good. I was pleased to find that the lyrics Kadrey used were from “Alice,” not the “Nighthawks at the Diner” days. Not that there’s anything wrong with those days, it’s just good to see people are keeping up with the newer stuff.

Maybe Gibson thought the book was “dirty-ass” because in addition to being a writer, Kadrey likes taking pictures of women wrapped in electrical tape. But the book itself isn’t porny, it doesn’t even have any sex scenes. The main character gets involved in a movie rental business but considers the porn-addled customers losers, not role models. So, I’m not sure what Gibson was getting at.

Anyhow, the book was good. Very visual, easy to imagine it as a movie in the head. It would be entertaining as a movie on the screen, too, as long as it didn’t star Keanu Reeves. Maybe Viggo in his LoTR hair and a burnt-up leather jacket.

There are strong women characters (although I am not sure it passes the Bechdel test). Magic and alchemy. Devils, angels, violence, and did I mention Tom Waits lyrics? The only false note was the title – the “Sandman Slim” moniker doesn’t appear ’til halfway into the book, and it doesn’t seem to make sense to the main character, either. It’s his celestial lucha libre name, pinned on him by someone else and it never has much meaning for the story. The uncharitable part of my mind wonders if it’s an attempt at pulling in unsuspecting Neil Gaiman fans. The more charitable side says maybe it was a title the author had really wanted to use for years and finally he said “screw it” and pinned it on this book.

There is plenty of room for this book to become a series, and that would be just fine by me.

A short horror novel with an interesting claim to fame – self published online, it was movie optioned and picked up by a major publisher.

The story is a twist on the traditional zombie tale. In this case, the zombies are alive, self-aware, and like being zombies and feel justified in what they are doing.

It flirts with allegory but never ties it up neatly. The main character is a jerk, one of those guys who drifts along in life, feeling entitled to everything without working for any of it. He is whiny and dissatisfied, hates his wife and the kids that he doesn’t seem to understand how he acquired. Then something mysterious happens and he becomes extremely strong, and murderously violent to anyone around him who hasn’t also become a monster. A “hater.”

The scenes of violence are detailed and genuinely shocking. A girl beats her best friend to death. A spouse attacks out of the blue.  I am not sure I’d want to see all that played out on the big screen.

There are sequels in the works, so the story was left hanging at the end. It’s good enough to make me want to pick up the next ones when they come out.

To the person who checked out this Jim Thompson before me:

I couldn’t help but notice your
68 brackets
54 parentheses
27 paragraphs underlined
3 stars
and one
question mark
littering this yellowing paperback
like dog turds
on a sidewalk.

A book rare enough that 25 years ago
the university library bought
it in a reissued paperback
and added boards to it
to give it a little gravitas
and hide the lurid
cover.

I thought you should know
that my eraser and I have
taken care of your
68 brackets
54 parentheses
27 paragraphs underlined
3 stars
and one
question mark.

I am become
the serial killer
of your thoughts.

No one will ever
have to step in
what you think is
important
again.

A thin story of crappy people doing crappy things to each other. Fails the Bechdel test pretty thoroughly. Women characters are few, they are only for screwing, and using sex to take advantage of men.

“The guy-thing,” Dawn said. “I can’t believe you two were friends. It’s beyond me.”
“I didn’t judge him,” Foley said. “We walked the yard and kept our eyes open.”
She didn’t understand that or ever would.