The Book I Bought: The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs

It's taken us 12 years to do it, but Joe and I are finally reading our last Edgar Rice Burroughs series: The Apache Duology. 1 That's not necessarily the end of our Edgar Rice Burroughs adventures, though, since ERB wrote 20 non-series books. 

I have all but 2 of those 20 books 4 (and the "missing" two can be had from the public library--they're a bit pricey to buy in book form and are not available electronically), but I had most of them (15) in Kindle e-book form. Joe and I have gone the Kindle route before 5 ...and it was okay, but it's clear that Joe prefers to read a Real Book. So I thought I'd look around and see if I could find cheap versions of the remaining ERBs.

Since I am not buying used books from Amazon anymore (HERE & HERE), I checked my usual suspects, and found that Thrift Books had most of the ones I was looking for...and at pretty reasonable prices. I also found (much to my surprise) that Walmart had quite a few of those books, also at reasonable prices. So I was going back and forth between those sites and a few others, trying to see what my best deal would be, and as I was scrolling through the Walmart ERB holdings I saw this:

Well. I liked that. Not for the lesbian overtones (not that there's anything wrong with that), but for the pulpy art style. And it was only $8.99. So I hit the button.

Well. It arrived yesterday, and I was kind of surprised at how big the box was. Not thick, but very long and wide. I wondered what kind of bizarre packing Walmart was using for their book orders. And then I opened the package and...it wasn't the packaging. This book was gi-normous. Check it out. 

Here's a normal sized book:

And here's that same normal-sized book with my new copy of The Efficiency Expert:

Mmm-hmmm. So yes, it is a bit unwieldy. I'm not very happy about that, but I have to admit that it is my own fault. In the details of the listing, it clearly says "Assembled Product Dimensions (L x W x H) 11.02 x 8.50 x 0.22 Inches." (And don't you love that "assembled product" descriptor?) To be honest, I just didn't think to look. Next time, though....

There's something else worthy of note. Going back to the listing on Walmart.com, here's how the title appears: 

The Efficiency Expert : The Best Book For Readers (Annotated) By Edgar Rice Burroughs. (Paperback)

I'm a big fan of annotations, so I took a quick look (even though it will be several months before I get to reading this book with Joe). And I was surprised that I did not seen one footnote...and no numbers in the text to indicate that there were any kind of notations, foot or otherwise. So I flipped to the back of the book. And there I discovered that the last 4 1/2 pages of this book (I'd tell you the page numbers, but alas, the pages are not numbered--which is yet another pain in the ass detail) are devoted to something entitled DETAILED 
BIOGRAPHY. Strangely, following that title is a parenthetical note:

( Non Readable )

Ummm...what? First off, a DETAILED BIOGRAPHY ( Non Readable ) does not equal annotations. Second off, what the hell does ( Non Readable ) mean in this context? I started reading, and I now have an explanation. Allow me to quote the first paragraph:

     "The story of the novel is like a act . Act which is performed in the real life . The story tells us soo many tgings which are related to yours daily struggle and compromise . We can also say that the author is well knowledge abiut anything which is happend around oneself and he also knew that how to solve that is the picture of real author . The novel is also claim to be most succesful novel for the author carrier and life ."

I shit thee not. The above is typed exactly as it appears in this book.

Now, I spent 23 years as a public high school English teacher, and (pardon my French and my lack of sensitivity here) I had to read thousands of shitty papers...some by students who were functionally illiterate, some by students who were not fluent in English. But I never read anything as bad as that paragraph above. And you know what? It gets worse from there. So I went back to the book proper and read the first chapter with bated breath. And...not a single typo. So at least there's that.

Still, I'd have to say that this is the worst version of The Efficiency Expert that I can imagine, so Edgar Rice Burroughs fans, beware. 

P.S. The publisher is listed on the Walmart site as "Independently Published," which isn't helpful, but the ISBN-13 is 9781080898398.

P.P.S. Okay, just one more quote from that DETAILED BIOGRAPHY ( Non Readable ): "...the novel is realated to the French revolution and the French war." The novel is set in 1920s Chicago, by the way.

1  For the record, here's a complete list of ERB's series: Barsoon (11), Tarzan (27 2), Pellucidar (7 3), Venus (5), Caspak (3), Moon (3), Mucker (3), Cave Girl (2), Barney Custer (2), and the aforementioned Apache (2). That's a total of 64 books (keeping in mind 3 ).

2  Including the two Tarzan Twins books and the posthumous collaboration with Joe R. Lansdale, The Lost Adventure)

3  One of these 7 is the Pellucidar  / Tarzan crossover, Tarzan at the Earth's Core, so it's on both lists.

4  And have read them on my own already, but am ready, willing, and able to have another go at them with Joe.

5  7 times: with the difficult to find for cheap Tarzan Twins books (there are two of them), with not difficult to find for cheap but I'd already bought an e-compilation that had them The Mucker Trilogy, and with the same story as with The Mucker books The Cave Girl duology. 

The Real Power of the DC Universe

Reading Winston Churchill's The Second World War has put me in the mood for some ancilliary material, so I've watched some World War II movies (like Pearl Harbor) and dug out some old comic books...like Storming Paradise by Chuck Dixon and Jackson Guice (WildStorm, 2008). Regarding the latter, which is a most excellent comic book, as I neared the end of the first issue I turned the page and saw this two page Adam Hughes spread:

And I had to pause for a moment. On the one hand, DC seems to be trying to say that its Super Women are powerful (in fact, more powerful than the Super Men), and that DC values these Women and wants its readers to value them, too. Well, that's good, right?

But most of the Women portrayed here...Catwoman, Oracle, Zatanna,  Black Canary, Power Girl, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl (I can't tell who the cut off characters are supposed to be)...are portrayed in such a way as to emphasize their sexuality, especially their breasts.

 Which just reiterates the same old message, doesn't it? No matter who you are as a Woman, you will be perceived primarily in terms of your sexuality...more specifically, in terms of the sexual appeal you provide for Men. Can you imagine a two page spread of DC's Super Men which emphasized the size of their cocks? (And if Superman's cock size paralleled Power Girl's breast size, he'd be hung to his knees.) Of course you can't. That would be completely unacceptable. 

So why is it okay to portray Women this way?

Just one more thing. I did say "most" of the Women were portrayed in this way. The one exception is...

Oracle. She is one of the two characters who isn't showing some serious cleavage (and the other one, Catwoman, has turned sideways so that the magnificence of her 36" breasts can be admired). She's not even showing any leg (as 3 of the other 6 are). Gee, I wonder why? Oh, that's right, because people in wheelchairs aren't sexy. I forgot. Also interesting is that Black Canary thinks it's okay to lean on Orcale's wheelchair. If I were Oracle, I'd be telling that bitch to back the fuck up.

So there it is. The Real Power of the DC Universe is in the exploitation of female sexuality. Specifically in terms of what is pleasing to Men. 

Admittedly this is from 13 years ago, so all of this is just anachronistic.

Right?

Amazon Fucked Me

I check my credit card charges pretty regularly. There are times when I've thought that it was unnecessary and perhaps even paranoid, because month after month, year after year, there were no problems. And I got used to using my credit card...an Amazon affiliated card... for just about everything, so there were a lot of charges. But I still kept checking.

And then a few months ago I saw a small charge...$1.99...and I couldn't remember ordering anything that corresponded to that amount and the date noted. The description line didn't give me any useful information, either. So, feeling a bit of chagrin, I called the Amazon help number. I got bounced around a bit. Finally I was told that this was a pre-charge that had been applied because my Amazon Prime was about to renew. So that was that.

Until the next month, when a charge for $12.99 showed up. Same suspicious circumstances. I called again. Again I had to go through several different people. I finally got to a supervisor. And again I was told that this was a pre-charge thing. I told this knowledgeable-sounding fellow what had happened previously, and he assured me that everything was copacetic, that I didn't need to worry.

Until the next month, when another charge for $12.99 showed up. Same suspicious circumstances. I called yet again. Again I had to go through several different people. And again I was told that this was a pre-charge thing. I said that it was not. I had to speak to someone else. I asked everyone I talked to (at least a half-dozen people) if they could give me any further information about the charge...WHO charged this on my card and Amazon account, for instance. They told me that they couldn't. Which baffled me. I mean...it was my card and my account, for fuck's sake. Finally I talked to a guy who told me the first and last letter of the first name on the charge...which clearly showed that he had the name right in front of him. I told him I didn't know anybody whose name corresponded to those letters. But he still wouldn't give me any more information.

So I called my credit card company and cancelled the card, of course, but I continued to ask Amazon for information about the erroneous charges. They ignored my email, and when I did a Live Chat (I try not to call, as it is extremely difficult to understand what many of the phone folks are saying, either because of bad connections or heavily accented English) I was assured that I would get information about this in a few days via email. And sure enough, I did get an email a few days later. It told me that Amazon couldn't give me any information.

So...I still have an Amazon account, but I don't have a credit card associated with it anymore, and I haven't made any purchases in the past three months. I'm thinking I might be done with them. Not because of the bogus charges...which were pretty small...but because of the run around they gave me...and the lack of information on this thing. 

I've been buying books from other online sources (which allow you to use PayPal) and I haven't been buying comic books at all, I'm sorry to say. (Though I have read quite a few free from the public library.) I bought some clothing from Walmart. I bought a couple of pieces of furniture from Wayfair. (PayPal, PayPal.) All of that stuff would have come from Amazon before. I've spent thousands of dollars there over the years. Probably tens of thousands of dollars. (Hell, I'm on my sixth Kindle!) But now....

Anyway. The moral of the story is Check Your Credit Card Charges. And don't trust the people who assure you that everything is alright if you suspicion that it is not. Keep asking to speak to a manager higher up the chain. Although that didn't really work out for me, did it?

Sigh.

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My mother was an odd person. As am I, as are my children...and I don't think that's a bad thing. Although it can be a painful thing, because it means that not only do you not fit in anywhere, but you don't even know why you don't fit in. If you're lucky, you bump into other odd people and you begin to feel slightly less uncomfortable about life. I don't know what happens if you're unlucky, but I suspect it involves a small house filled with lots of stuff...some of it cats.

When I was a very young kid, my mother would get out China pencils (checked...yep, they still exist) and let me and my sister go to work on the faux marble dining room table. Our mission, which we gleefully accepted, was to use the China pencils to darken the lines in the "marble" to reveal what we saw there: faces, animals, etcetera. And one time she called me upstairs to the bathroom and told me to sit on the toilet and look at the towel hanging from the rack on the wall. I did. The towel had roses printed on it. I looked and looked. "Do you see the cow?" my mom asked. And then I did. 

Today I went for a long walk...a solo one, which is rare for me in these Covid days, as six days a week I have the company of my two youngest...and when I got home I was feeling pretty good, pretty strong. In my post-"heart attack" (non-ischemic left bundle branch blockage) life, that's not all that common for me, so I thought I'd get out my chain saw and get to work on some of the outrageous growth in my backyard before it started to sprout. I worked for about an hour and was literally reeling from the exertion. When I finally decided that it wasn't a good idea to keep pushing on, I actually staggered to the back door and had to sit for twenty minutes on my top step before I felt steady again. Then I kicked off my muddy shoes, went into the kitchen and got some water, went to the living room and relaxed for a half-hour with some Winston Churchill (The Second World War Volume III: The Grand Alliance) before I went into the kitchen to see what was up for lunch. As I passed the kitchen window I glanced out, and was startled to see a pale white bear sitting in my backyard:

Do you see it? Just in case it's as elusive as the arrow in the FedEx logo can be, check this out:

I actually stared at it for a couple of seconds thinking, "How the hell did a bear get into my backyard?" before I realized it was the garbage bag that I'd been using to kneel on while I cut away at the intrusive flora. It had blown up into the branches I'd cut and perched there, waiting to give me a start.

I sent this picture to my sister and asked her what she saw. She texted back, "Is that a dog tied to a tree? Call Animal Control, that is illegal!" 

Just like the good old days.

Man, I miss my mom. 

Leaving The Amazon for a Better World

I've had some problems with Amazon lately. Nothing too awful, and nothing I want to go into here*, but bad enough for me to start looking at other places to make my purchases. Most of my purchases tend to be books. And though I've used various online bookstores for some time now**, I'd have to admit that Amazon tends to be my Go To place, even when it comes to buying Used Books. But since The Trouble*, I've started to reconsider that choice...and as of about 4 a.m. this morning I have decided that I will probably not buy any more books from Amazon, and definitely will not buy any more Used Books from them. 

I woke up from a rather dissettling dream (at fo--...you guessed it) and, knowing that I would not be going back to sleep, picked up my Kindle and read Christoffer Petersen's Camp Century. (A most excellent story, by the way. More on that elsewhere as well.) When I finished, I popped over for a look at my Facebook feed and saw a story about Better World Books. I have been a Better World Books customer for some time now. Not only do they have a large selection & good (often the best) prices, but they are also a company which attempts to do some good in the world: "...it donates books or a percentage of its profit to literacy programs around the world. As of 2013, the company had donated an estimated $14 million under this program." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_World_Books) I also lived in the Mishawaka / South Bend Indiana area for a year and a half, where the company originated, so it has that pull for me as well.  So I watched the video (HERE) that had been posted on Facebook. And when it hit the frame which you see pictured above, I had to pause it, back it up, and listen again. With reference to Amazon, Dustin Holland, President and CEO of Better World Books, told the interviewer this: "They take 40% of every dollar, so if we sell a $10 book, $4 goes to Amazon. If we sell a $10 book on Better World Books that money goes back into the company and we're able to do more, support our employees, and give back and donate more books around the world. [For every book bought directly from Better World Books]...we donate a book to somebody in need." 

Mr. Holland also talked about how the company has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Robinson Community Learning Center in South Bend, and says that they have donated close to 30 million books worldwide to date. (Which is more than twice the number reported on the Wikipedia page, by the way.) ***

But of course the salient point is this: Amazon is taking a huge cut of the profits away from Better World Books...a company which uses a healthy portion of its profits to make the world a better place.

Hmmm. That would be scanned.

Okay, done scanning. Fuck Amazon. Make Mine Better World Books. In fact, ahmo go buy some stuff from them right now. Speaking of which, here's another big bonus so far as I'm concerned: you can pay via PayPal. And after getting burned by Amazon with respect to my account security*, that's a big plus.

P.S. After I'd completed today's purchase ($15.98 for three books: Apache Devil by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Saints for Girls by Solveig Muus and Bart Tesoriero, and This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich...which neatly breaks down to one for Joe, one for Jacqueline, and one for me--respectively)...I received the message that my Better World Books purchases had resulted in 23 books being donated. 

So there's that.

👣🎵

* Though I will go into it elsewhere, out of a sense of civic duty coupled with my anger at the ineptitude and disdain displayed by a half-dozen members of the Amazon team.

** Better World Books, Thrift Books, Alibris, AbeBooks, Biblio.com are my go tos, though of course ebay has been known to have its charms as well.

*** In attempting to verify the figure, I ended up on the Better World Books' Our Impact page (who'd have thunk it?) and found these (running) totals: 26,502,000 Books Donated, 28,430,000 Funds raised for literacy & libraries, & 320,019,014 Books reused or recycled. So suck on that, Wikipedia.