I just received a spam message advertising FAMILY INCEST. Gee, I didn't realize there was any other kind.

Congratulations to my friend Geoff Landis, SF writer and NASA scientist, who has been chosen along with 27 other researchers to participate in the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission:

      NASA PRESS RELEASE

Geoff participated in the Pathfinder mission, and even named one of the rocks near the landing site. He's won the Hugo and Nebula, too, so if he wasn't such a nice guy we'd all have to hate him.

From the Washington Post Book World last month, an article by that most perceptive of science-fiction critics, Nick Gevers, on why you should be reading Gene Wolfe:

Master of the Universe Could a former engineer who helped invent Pringles be our greatest living writer?

Oh, my God! It just occurred to me why the radio station on that show with Gordon Jump was named WKRP. Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake.

Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 09:55:00 -0600
From: John Ford <John.Ford@LionsPrideEnterprises.com>
Subject: Advertising Partnership

Hi-

I'm the Media Coordinator with RankYou.com. I was surfing through Nielsen/NetRatings and I noticed shunn.net was ranked 2521 during September 2001. We are looking for highly trafficked sites with whom we can spend large amounts of money and receive quality pop-under inventory. We have $10,000 budgeted for a test pop-under campaign of 10,000,000 impressions. If the campaign is successful for both parties, we would like to sign a long term deal. Please get back to me as soon as possible as we have a limited amount of time to get this test kicked off.

John P. Ford
Media Coordinator
Lions Pride Enterprises, Inc.
Email: John.Ford@LionsPrideEnterprises.com

Did you even look at my site longer than it took to figure out where to send your spam? Do you have any idea why it ranked that high in September 2001? Fuck you and your advertising test. Keep the Web free.

Bill Shunn

Two and a half years ago, Laura and I were in Japan for two weeks. We bought a Tare Panda book and brought it back for the newborn son of a couple of friends of ours. We're away now visiting those friends, and we've also been able to visit that fondly remembered book. Now we have, er, a yen to own a copy ourselves. If only that were as easily done as said:

      http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4096812129

(Don't forget to look at the enlarged view of the cover.)

I'm not sure exactly what this is all about, but I'm determined to feel flattered nonetheless.

You know that Nigerian email scam that never stops showing up in your inbox? Roger Ebert, in the current installment of his monthly column for Yahoo Internet Life, cites that scam as the "third to fifth largest industry in Nigeria."

If we could eradicate spam, would the Nigerian economy collapse?

Hey, it's the whole Tare Panda clan, having a family reunion on our kitchen table!