Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

On August 19, 2011August 19, 2011 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire, writing2 Comments

: Grey Wolf

The answer to that question is: everybody.

For one thing, people don’t like authors whose last names are impossible to spell correctly: is it Wolf, Woolf, Woolfe, or Wooolf?

Plus, there seems to be that lingering question about whether Virginia Woolf is or is not on the endangered species list and whether or not she can be shot on sight in certain western states.

No self-respecting rancher reads such books as Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando because “the author of those books is eating out cattle.” Others say Virginia Woolf is, obviously, an eastern predator and/or that no westerner would want to read an entire novel about a central-Florida city.

People of my generation, and that includes ranchers who are almost too old to ride a horse, fondly remember Virginia Woolf’s excellent job of acting in the bio-epic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. “She might have been a Liz Taylor clone, but she knew how to act.” Either Taylor or Woolf was married to Richard Burton on more than one occasion. It was hard to keep track in thos pre-Internet days.

True crime writer Megan Abbott (The End of Everything), in a recent interview on The Rap Sheet explained her shift from reading classics to more ramped-up novels with the quip: “How many times can you talk about Virginia Woolf before you want to kill yourself?”

: Virginia Woolf

I really can’t answer that. For one thing, due to the mix-ups about her name and predator status, Woolf really doesn’t come up in conversations very often. In fact, I can go for months without hearing anything about Virginia Woolf. The last time I mentioned Woolf in a bar, a guy drunk on shooters said, “she took a bite out of my nephew’s puppy up in Richmond.” I said I was sorry to hear that.

These days, the vicissitudes of reading tastes have led people to read more about werewolfs than Virgina Woolfs (or should that be wolves?) Misinformation being the currency of the Internet, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to get a viral campaign started that alledges Virginia Woolf did not kill herself in 1941. Weather historians have determined that there was a full moon on the night she drowned and, chances are, she became a shapeshifter and that we all have a very good reason to be afraid of Virginia Woolf.

This is pure speculation on my part. Wolves are generally feared for scatterbrained reasons, and Virginia is no exception. As kids, none of whom have heard of Virginia Woolf are fond of keying into their text messages when they make an important point: Just saying. . .

–Malcolm

In addition to his contemporary fantasy adventure novels Sarabande and The Sun Singer, Malcolm R. Campbell is also the author of the comedy/satire Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire. Campbell maintains that there is no reason to be afraid of any of his books except, perhaps, Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey which has a lot to say about wolves and wolfers.

‘Jock Talks – The Collection’ Gobsmacks Readers

On May 29, 2011May 29, 2011 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire

Everett, WA, May 29, 2011 (Star-Gazer News Service)–Vanilla Heart Publishing is seriously gobsmacked to announce that invesitigative reporter Jock Stewart might not be a real person.

Stewart, whose Jock Talks – The Collection was released by Vanilla Heart today, used an autopen to tell reporters that he’s just as real as Betty Crocker and Cap’n Crunch.

“Jock Talks – The Collection is, first of all, a collection,” the autopen said. “For only 3.99, readers who want to be seriously gobsmacked and/or laugh their butts off will find 117 pages of satire, parody and other lies from four stunning e-books:”

Jock Talks… Satirical News
Jock Talks… Politics
Jock Talks… Strange People
Jock Talks… Outlandish Happenings

A Few Choice Excerpts

Washington, D.C.—The U.S. Capitol building will be dismantled by the end of the day to clear the way for an Almighty Dollar Big Box Store, the Manifest Destiny Development Corporation (MDDC) announced this morning.

–

“I blame news editors for the dumbing down of America,” said DDAS president Mary Worth. “Today, while the Libyan Civil war rages on, the two biggest stories are ―UNEXPECTED PAIR SENT HOME ON DANCING WITH THE STARS and PIA TOSCANO SENT HOME FROM AMERICAN IDOL.'”

–

Junction City, TX—Last night, I dreamt I’d fallen on hard times and had once again been forced to take a job as Britney Spears’ cook.

–

Dubbed the Shit to Shinola Highway, Interstate 666 rips through Junction City‘s primeval forest where the wind stings the toes and bites the nose.

–

Daytona Beach, FL―The latest racket in the death business is the sale of skyscraper crypts for those who want to advertise how high they climbed before they died.

–

Greg, Jim, Dixie and Sweetie Pie of Junction City’s Cry of the Raven Memorial Gardens are among the 72,000 dead Americans who received stimulus checks of $250 each from the Social Security Administration (SSA) as part of a massive economic recovery package intended to stimulate a dying economy.

–

“I may be butt ugly, but the rest of me is pure goddess.”

–

At a press conference at high noon today, Vanilla Heart Publishing’s Satire Editor Bill Smith (not his real name) said he used the word gobsmacked after hearing Chef Gordon Ramsay use the expression a thousand times on Fox Broadcasting’s “Kitchen Nightmares.”

“Gordon also screams, IT’S RAW, IT’S RAW,” said Smith, “but the phrase seemed totally inappropriate for a collection of satire.”

–

—Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the “Jock Talks” series of satirical e-books and the novel “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

Harding: ‘Teapot Dome Spirit Pushing Up Oil Prices’

On May 2, 2011May 3, 2011 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn news, satire2 Comments

from Morning Satirical News

Blooming Grove, Ohio, May 2, 2010–With oil prices on the rise, members of the Warren G. Harding Seance and Spook Association (WGHSASA), asked the ghost of the former President at his annual Walpurgis Night appearance if he knew “what’s up with big oil?”

“The Spirit of Teapot Dome is pushing up oil prices,” said Harding (1865-1923), “and this time out, none of my friends are going to take the fall for it.”

Harding, who is often called America’s least-effective President, has appeared to paranormal people on the thirteenth floor of the historic Argus Hotel in metropolitan Blooming Grove near his birthplace every Walpurgis Night since 1924.

When the former President appeared to be a no-show for his yearly Not Nostrums, But Normalcy meeting with CIA operatives, thrill seekers and Presidential hopefuls, WGHSASA members lit an extra bonfire on the hotel balcony and began changing the immortal lines of writer John Hodgman:

Fiddle, diddle, fiddle fee,

Teapot Dome has come for me.

Fiddle, diddle, middle, me,

Harding’s corpse will come for thee.

Harding, who materialized dead-center on an overstuffed couch, shouted, “Who interupts my sleep tonight when the powers of darkness are abroad in the land?”

“It is I, Master, your humble servant, Mikey De Wolfe, president of the Blooming Grove chapter of your fan club.”

“What have you to ask of me, Mikey?”

“We are concerned about Benchmark oil for June delivery prices as reflected in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and on the ICE Futures Exchange in London,” said Mikey.

“Mikey, dear boy, you must always remember my credo, Not Agitation, But Adjustment,” said Harding. “As you ponder oil prices, ponder where the oil is and who has it.”

“Big oil has it, Sir.”

“Have they really?”

Harding leaned back on the couch and seemed to fall asleep. When Hodgman’s immortal lines failed to hold him to the earth plane, Mikey and other WGHSASA members served the traditional post-seance snack of Alaskan King crab to all who had gathered at the Argus.

On-the-scene historians reminded reporters that the meal is a brave tribute to a former President who, some say, died of bad crabs in San Francisco during his 1923 cross-country “Voyage of Misunderstanding,” rail trip.

According to well-placed insiders, “Big Oil” representives attending the seance where “white faced” during Harding’s pronouncements. One grey haired man dropped his teapot.

According to Old Maxie, the elevator boy at the Argus, the hotel doesn’t have a thirteenth floor.

“But every year they come here,” he said, with a grin on his face, “to re-enact Odgen Nash’s most famous epic, A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor. As Nash said, conversations like this are ‘table talk in hell.’ Let’s depart in peace in a spirit of Not Experiment, But Equipoise and let our dearly departed Presidents lie.”

Mikey laughed when Maxie said that.

–

–Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter for the Star-Gazer. Download his free “Jock Talks…Satirical News” e-book from Smashwords.

Three ‘Jock Talks’ Satires Published

On April 9, 2011April 9, 2011 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire2 Comments

Vanilla Heart Publishing has released three Jock Talks satire collections available in multiple e-book formats.

Written by Malcolm R. Campbell (Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, 2009) Jock Talks Outlandish Happenings, Jock Talks Politics, and Jock Talks Strange People are jam-packed with the best and the wildest post from his Morning Satirical News weblog.

The e-books are available on Kindle for 99 cents each. They are also available in multiple formats, including PDF, at Smashwords at 99 cents.

Except from Jock Talks Strange People

Readers Looking for ‘The Lust Symbol’ Ravish Bookstore

Angry, and apparently horny, shoppers tore apart the Main Street Book Emporium at high noon today looking for a book purportedly called The Lust Symbol.

Owner Jim Exlibris, who accidentally promoted a one-hour half price sale for Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol with a 48-point Century Gothic “‘LUST SYMBOL’ REDUCED FOR HARD-UP READERS” headline, said that he could only blame himself for the misunderstanding.

“I just a country bookseller, not a advertising specialist or a bloody proofreader,” said Exlibris.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, so many people in heat at the same time. They ran through my shop like bulls from Pamplona trying to find The Lust Symbol. They tripped over a life-size cardboard cutout of Dan Brown next to my display for The Lost Symbol without even noticing it.”

Police, who were enjoying lunch-time doughnuts across the intersection at the Krispy Kreme are being criticized for failing to respond to the bookstore riot.

“We presumed the whole thing was just customers having fun,” Chief Kruller. “Sure, we thought there might be porn involved, but the FEDs handle all of Junction City’s porn.

Witnesses report that Exlibris escaped from the mob, ran across the street, threw a copy of The Lost Symbol against the side of Sergeant Wayne Bismarck’s head, and screamed “arrest somebody, dammit, they claim I’m hiding all my lust from them.”

“Nobody’s ever thrown the book at me before,” Bismarck said.
According to local bookmakers who serve as police consultants, Exlibris “has a lot of priors” when it comes to misleading advertising. Main Street Book Emporium entries in the police database include advertisements for books called Bone With the Wind, Jane Error, The Hell Seekers, For Whom the Belle Rolls and the Handmaid’s Tail.

Friends of the Library board members Hilda Meek and Anna Van Landingham, who were in the store to pick up a box of books Exlibris was donating to the lost readers program, said under interrogation they believed the purported “lust for lost” misprint was a publicity stunt.

“We make proofreading mistakes at the Public Library all the time,” said Meek. “Last year when we promoted a ‘fun at the pubic library ball,’ we feigned embarrassment and everyone ended up having a bang-up time.”

Police warned Exlibris to improve his proofreading skills or else.

When the Grits Trees are in Bloom

On March 25, 2011April 28, 2020 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire6 Comments

“Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists.” — Lewis Grizzard, author of “Don’t Sit Under the Grits Tree with Anyone Else But Me.”

You know it’s spring in south and central Georgia when the grits trees are in bloom.

True grits, as the late Atlanta humorist Lewis Grizzard would attest, are not INSTANT: “The idiot who invented instant grits also thought of frozen fried chicken, and they ought to lock him up before he tries to freeze-dry collards.”

After a hearty breakfast of grits and red eye gravy, true Southerners drive south on I-75 through Macon into what was once Stuckeys and pecan praline country toward Tifton where, years ago, Captain Tift once built a saw mill in support of his family’s shipping business.

The captain was also into turpentine, tobacco, pecans, sweet potatoes and grits. Northern historians, thinking grits were made in factories, overlooked Tift’s grit orchards, so you won’t find them in your grade school history books. But those orchards flourish today and every year on March 25, the kind of people who might take exception to freeze-dried collards, head into the lush agricultural lands of Georgia’s coastal plain in search of evergreen trees with large white flowers.

Years before the white man knew there would one day be a Southern state named Georgia, the Apalachee Indians discovered that the natural result of crossing a Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) with a Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) was the Grits Tree (Quercus grandiflora Zea mays).

Like pearls in oysters, Grits are created in the soft tissue of the tree’s magnificent flowers. In the late summer and early fall, Grits fall like rain from the trees where Grits Sweepers gather them into windrows that look like dunes of snow. They dry in the sun until they are ready to be vacuumed up and cast before swine in the form of bacon, ham, and breaded pork chops.

But in the spring, it’s the white grits flowers that attract the attention. The kind of person who would eat freeze-dried collards or who thinks red eye gravy is the airline food served on long, over-night flights, will mistake a grits flower for a magnolia blossom. Magnolias have a musky, cloying scent. Grits flowers smell like Waffle House.

NoraMill Grits — True Grits are in the Bag

“Sitting under the grits tree” is a phrase that goes back to founding of Georgia Grits Day on March 25, 1901 in honor of the birth of Georgia Brown beneath such a tree near Tifton. Sitting under a grits tree is about jazz and having babies and eating red eye gravy on a hot summer afternoon when it seems like every breath of air between Macon and the Florida border smells like breakfast at a Waffle House.

There’s no love better than the love built with true grits. It’s Southern love and you can’t get it in a factory and you won’t find it in the hashed browns part of the country. Every March, we celebrate true grits, not the movie, but the food and all it stands for.
–

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the satirical novel, “Special Investigative Reporter” on Kindle for about the same amount as a steaming bowl of grits.

People who need to shut up in 2011

On December 30, 2010 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general, satire2 Comments

Guest post by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter, the Star-Gazer

At the end of the year, hack reporters traditionally make inane statements about what has been important during the past twelve months and what will be important during the next twelve months. Truth be told, I don’t have a clue. I’m paid to tell you what happens, not why you ought to care about it.

These days, many journalists are breaking that rule. Here’s what that means to you. You know what they think before you know what facts led them to think what they think. What a shame. Why should anyone care what a hack reporter thinks? Reporters aren’t gods, sages or soothsayers. Hell, a lot of them are just plain stupid.

My profoundest hope for 2011–other than getting rid of the IRS and TSA–is that journalists who tell me what they think will shut up.

Whether I’m watching FOX or CNN, I’m pretty well guaranteed to see a bevy of talking heads (usual suspects) who are paraded before my wondering eyes who just happen to feel the same way about the issues that the network feels. Hell, what are the odds that an objective panel of experts would all think the same way?

My profoundest hope–other than not seeing celebrity divorces and affairs spattered all around the Internet like they’re real news–is that those CNN and FOX news panels of “experts” will shut up in 2011.

There’s a fair number of celebrities who need to shut up in 2011 because, quite frankly, we’re tired of hearing how they hate the “evil rich” even though they’re rich and/or seeing them testify before Congress because they’re famous rather than actually knowledgeable about a cause or an issue.

My profoundest hope–other than not seeing boring trailers for movies that are supposed to be funny–is that most celebrities will just speak the lines the writers give them and then shut up in 2011.

“Silence,” Lao Tzu reportedly said, “is a source of great strength.”

Why then, do we admire those who never shut up? This is a puzzlement, if not a paradox. As a hack reporter with credentials that will get me inside any meeting, press conference or sanitarium, I would like to report stories about the strong, silent types rather than the noisy weaklings who occupy so much of our attention, column inches and air time.

Alas, we live in a noisy world of sound bites. As a reporter, I have to report that the beauty queen really wants to feed the hungry, that the movie star who earns more than my neighborhood really cares for the poor, and that the politician cares more about his constituents than his next election. In the world of sound bites, I know from experience that all the usual suspects won’t shut up in 2011. So, my profoundest hope–other than learning that soup makers have decided we don’t need all that damn salt–is that we’ll just stop listening to the people who can’t stop talking.

If silence is golden, then noise must be fool’s gold. All the more reason in 2011 to ask why the people who should shut up won’t give us a moment’s peace.

As a hack writer, I’m paid to listen. Since you’re not, you can tune out all those people who need to shut up in 2011.

—Jock

Wicked Leeks Site Under Fire for Leaking Leek Recipes

On December 12, 2010December 13, 2010 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire11 Comments

by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

Junction City, December 12, 2010–In a post-dawn raid of wild leek farmer Giles Asinine’s onion-domed mansion on Lady of Shallot Terrace here today, police found thousands of recipe cards stolen from the files of Gluttony Magazine and area restaurants including the Purple Platter and Kentucky Fried Scallions.

While charges have yet to be filed, police department spokesmen claim the recipe cache is the pièce de résistance within the Asinine-founded non-profit Wicked Leeks Publishing empire. In past years, Wicked Leeks has garnered a controversial reputation for publishing recipes stolen from magazines, restaurants and farm families as a “public service.”

“Junction City became a better town,” Asinine said in a 2009 news release, “when we learned Kentucky Fried Scallions ‘secret recipe’ claim was the work of mad chefs who were covering up the fact the restaurant was actually frying shallots.”

The first layer of the Wicked Leeks organization was peeled away when the Purple Platter Restaurant sued Asinine in state court earlier this year for stealing and disseminating the recipe for its famed cock-a-leekie soup. While news reports at the time focused on the difficulty of jury selection in a town where 98.6% of the residents think cock-a-leekie is British slang for using a restroom, the restaurant successfully proved some $100,000 in damages once its famed soup du jour was “put in cans across the state.”

“Prior to the Wicked Leeks disclosure, nobody knew we put prunes in the brew,” said master chef Coral Snake Smith. “Fortunately, none of our sous chefs leaked our more-famous meatloaf recipe to any Asinine stool pigeons.”

Spokesmen for Junction City’s Gluttony Magazine said that the publication is on the cusp of bankruptcy because Wicked Leeks gives away for free what the magazine is selling.

“Our June issue featured recipes for chicken-leek casserole, fettuccine with leek sauce and leek quiche,” said vegetable editor Sue Jones. “We sold only one copy of the issue because everyone else in town surfed out to the Wicked Leeks site and got the recipes for free a month before we reached the newsstand.”

Informed sources say that Jones’ fine-tuned palate provided the foundation for her expert testimony in Platter v. Wicked Leaks that showed that “Giles’ Take-a-Leak Soup” was exactly the same formulation as “Coral Snake Smith’s Cock-a-Leekie Soup.”

“Jones is no spring onion,” said Smith. “She’s eaten so much food in her lifetime that nobody can sneak a recipe past her from soup to nuts.”

While giving due credit to Jones, Mayor Clark Trail claims that last summer’s expansion of the police department’s vice squad unit allowed it to cut the leeks off at the blender before they were pureed into a “free-for-all Internet Vichyssoise.”

“Our city council saw the wisdom of enlarging the focus of our vice quad from the more enjoyable vices of gambling and prostitution to include the more trivial moral faults of tattling and publishing stolen goods,” Trail said. “Righting a wrong with a wrong, shouldn’t be right.”

-30-

Coming December 17th: Purple Platter Meatloaf

Vanilla Heart Publishing’s authors will post recipes from their novels this coming Friday. Tune in here for the meatloaf recipe the Wicked Leeks site never found. Then follow the links to other great posts and recipes.

For more Jock Stewart, you are invited to partake of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, available on Kindle for less than the cost of a dinner out on the town.

Jock Stewart’s Christmas Carol

On December 8, 2010December 8, 2010 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire2 Comments

Coming December 17: Dine Along – Recipes from Vanilla Heart Publishing authors. Learn how to make Coral Snake Smith’s Purple Platter Meatloaf.

Yes, “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” is on Kindle at only $5.99.

“For those that like authors like Vonnegut or Miller, ‘Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire’ is a must-read. The book contains a lot of dark humour, moments of sexual tension, and characters that go back and forth between light and dark. Campbell’s play on words and original plot is sure to keep any reader on his or her toes.” — Nora Caron, “Journey to the Heart.”

Catty Definitions

On December 3, 2010December 3, 2010 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire2 Comments

Catacomb

Catafalque

Catalog

Catalyst

Catamaran

Cat and Fiddle

Catastrophe

Catapult

Catbird

Catboat

Cat box

Cat-call

Categorize

Catgut

Cathode

Catnip

Cat-ice

Cat o’mountain

Cat o’ nine tails

Catsup

Cat’s Cradle

Cat’s Pajamas

Cat’s Paw

Catwalk

–

–Author of the satire Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, Malcolm R. Campbell lives in a house with four cats.

Kick the Bucket on Hallowe’en

On October 29, 2010October 29, 2010 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire3 Comments

an encore post from “Worst of Jock Stewart”

Frank N. Stein, owner and operator of the Ghost-of-a-Chance Cemetery at 666 Deadline Road plans a Death by Chocolate Hallowe’en for kids trick-or-treating at “death’s door.”

“This year, we’ll be handing out our usual death bells, death watches, and door-nails to everyone who knocks at the Death’s Door entrance to the cemetery,” said Stein. “We’re especially excited about this year’s ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE OPEN GRAVE CALLS gala. I think we’re going to top last year’s BABY, CAN YOU HEAR DEATH’S RATTLE sing-along.”

Chief gravedigger T. Stone, who laughingly claims he’s the only one on the premises who knows where all the bodies are buried, said he almost worked himself into an early grave getting all the holes dug in time.

“I’m death-warmed-over exhausted,” he said, “but I’ll be cheating the grim reaper again by Sunday night.”

According to a dead letter posted at the cemetery door, every kid who successfully kicks a plastic bucket of dead men’s fingers into an open grave from six feet away will be presented with a “Dead Weight of Chocolate.”

“Most of them aren’t real dead men’s fingers,” said Stein. “We chopped up a bunch of old mannequins and littered the pieces around the place to scare the life out of the younger kids. We had enough dead hands left over to pretty much give everyone the finger.”

“I practiced kicking the bucket all afternoon,” Stone said, “and it’s not as easy as you think. Those kids will have to use a little dead reckoning to get it in the grave.”

Plans to offer vodka labeled as embalming fluid were deep-sixed once the Deadline Road Homeowners Association got wind of it and raised a stink.

“We don’t mind the spirits so much as the thought of hearing the words of that hideous old song ‘National Embalming School’ blasting away all night loud enough to wake the dead,” said association president Darla Norris. “We’re not teetotalers out here. After all, we snapped up our share of the icy six-packs they gave away during the CRYING IN MY BIER festival three years ago.”

Ghost-of-a-Chance began inviting trick-or-treaters onto cemetery grounds 25 years ago when Stein’s father Charles announced that he could no longer afford to “buy enough deadlights and deadlocks to keep out the deadbeats who sneak in every year to knock over a tombstone or two after knocking up their girlfriends.”

Norris, who has lived on Deadline Road for 26 years, said that almost everyone in her neighborhood was conceived as a Hallowe’en trick in the years before “old Charlie Stein made vandalism a dead issue while making death and cemeteries a real treat again.”

The police department’s Dead-to-Rights Hallowe’en Task Force will work the graveyard shift again this year to provide security and to pick up anyone who is dead drunk. Doctors from Memorial Hospital will be on hand to assist anyone who gets one foot caught in the grave. Overflow parking will be available in Potter’s field.

“We’ll be dead to the world by the time the night’s over,” Stein said. “It’s worth it, though. We’re putting the boot back into boot hill to make life better for kids in the here and now while reminding their aging parents to consider us in their plans for the hereafter.”

–

For more Jock Stewart comedy and satire, give all of your Hallowe’en visitors a copy of “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” from Vanilla Heart Publishing.

“From the opening paragraph, Jock finds himself sucked into a world of deception, murder, and illicit trysts. Despite being set in modern times (as evidenced by the existence of Krispy Kremes), Sea of Fire has a delightfully old-time noir feel, kicked up a notch by fast-paced dialog and laugh out loud puns.” — Nancy Whitney-Reiter

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