Updates 28 Oct 2010 12:09 am by David !

CULTURE OF DEATH

Some more media mentions!

Here’s a cleverly-titled post on SLOG, the blog of The Stranger alt-weekly in Seattle (which runs Dinosaur Comics in print, albeit a week ago I noticed that they printed the wrong title on it).

Here’s trenchant analysis from Publishers Weekly, or at least a succinct bullet-point version of the highlights of what’s happened over the last few days!

ABC News in Australia has also picked up the story, quoting at length the absurd hobos-winning-the-Super Bowl metaphor that Ryan and David rambled on about in our audio message.

Something else we learned today! When we picked a release date, we tried to aim for a day far from other major book releases — why invite more competition than we needed to? Unfortunately we don’t know anything about publishing, and so missed the fact that a number of high-profile books also had official release dates of October 26: a new John Grisham book; Keith Richards’ autobiography; a Barefoot Contessa cookbook; etc.

Let me put that another way — the books we beat on Tuesday were on their release date.

Apparently someone named Glenn Beck had a book come out on Tuesday too? I don’t know who Mr. Beck is, but a quick Google seems to indicate that he’s some sort of Ron Popeil-like infomercial huckster or something:


He also apparently has a three-hour daily radio program (well, one hour and forty-one minutes if you don’t count commercial breaks), an hour-long streaming internet program, and an hour-long talk show on cable that he’s been using to push his books. His radio show is full of fancy-sounding commercials like this.

But we beat him on his release day. I feel bad! He must have been looking forward to that day so much!

Anyway, I’m absolutely certain that our particular brand of bootstrapping, entrepreneurial, small-business-friendly capitalism is right up Mr. Beck’s alley — by all accounts he is an outspoken champion of the little guy, a humble spokesman for the downtrodden.

And I want to tell you that, um…our books are ALWAYS #1. And I find it REALLY fascinating, FASCINATING, that if you go to Amazon.com, Broke is number THREE. And the two books that are ahead of it — one is Keith Richards’ Life, which is getting a TON of — you know, that’s everywhere.

But this is a book about, you know, how he snorted his father’s ashes, after death. (sarcastically) THAT’S cool. This is the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] book. This is for all of the — this is for [union leader] Andy Stern who’s all, I guarantee you he’s on the phone and has been the last few days, you know, with people like, you know, Bill Ayers going “All right, DUDE! Ah, do you remember when we were rolling around in the mud like animals? Remember that? This guy was smoking ash — you know, smoking his dad, and, and, popping stuff into his veins? Ah, those were the DAYS, man.” And then William Ayers was like, “Whaddaya mean, those were the days? I’m still doin’ that stuff, man!”

So that… “culture of death.” And it’s an escape into the past, of, you know, the Woodstock stuff.

And then, the #1 book — TODAY, at least — is Machine of Death. And it’s a — collected stories about, you know, people who know how they’re gonna die. Haowww!

So you have DEATH — I know it’s called Life, but what a life it is, really! It’s a culture of death! OR, “How do we restore ourselves?”

These are the — this is the left, I think, speaking. This is the left. You want to talk about where we’re headed? We’re headed towards a culture of death. A culture that, um, celebrates the things that have destroyed us. Not that the Rolling Stones have destroyed us — I mean, you can’t always get what you want. You know what I’m saying? Brown sugar. I have no idea what that means.

– Glenn Beck, The Glenn Beck Program, October 27, 2010

UPDATE: The audio has been posted here.

In the hours since that program was first broadcast into the ears of legions nationwide, Mr. Beck has gotten his wish and captured the #1 spot. We’re just sad we couldn’t have given him his special day on Tuesday! If you’re reading this, Mr. Beck, we’re sorry about that. We just didn’t even know you were there.

54 Responses to “CULTURE OF DEATH”

  1. on 28 Oct 2010 at 1:36 am 1.Julia said …

    This post is a thing of beauty.

  2. on 28 Oct 2010 at 1:45 am 2.michael j patrick said …

    How could anyone who openly admits he has no idea what “Brown Sugar” is about have any followers whatsoever?

  3. on 28 Oct 2010 at 2:43 am 3.Kewangji said …

    Ahahahaha. So awesome. Glenn Beck is a silly, silly man.

  4. on 28 Oct 2010 at 4:12 am 4.Chris said …

    I love how his research into the book consists of “reading the cover”.

  5. on 28 Oct 2010 at 5:33 am 5.GreyWyvern said …

    Ha! Oct 26th couldn’t have been more perfect, even if you had *planned* to rub Beck’s nose in it. Victory!

  6. on 28 Oct 2010 at 5:50 am 6.Pelotard said …

    Say, do you have anything resembling actual sales figures from Amazon? NovelRank has gone very strange on me.

  7. on 28 Oct 2010 at 7:11 am 7.jojostarbuck said …

    I cannot tell you how happy and proud I am to have helped in this effort by picking up MoD – ESPECIALLY knowing this now.

  8. on 28 Oct 2010 at 7:25 am 8.Daniel said …

    I’m a conservative, but find Glenn Beck to be a little creepy. This doesn’t help. Can’t the man simply realize when he’s been bested?

    I bought MoD because it’s a novel idea, well-written, and sounds like a fun read. Glenn’s book is just a dumbed-down version of much more scholarly works. His is derivative, MoD is original. I can’t wait for my MoD copy to arrive!

  9. on 28 Oct 2010 at 8:07 am 9.David said …

    I’m conservative too, though generally don’t care one way or the other what Beck says, but this kinda torques me off. Quit whining, man. His “review” of MoD was based solely on the title.
    I went and bought a second copy of MoD after reading this.

  10. on 28 Oct 2010 at 10:06 am 10.Drezz said …

    Ahh pundits. Spouting off-the-cuff unrehearsed and misinformed tidbits to rally and incite the masses.

    It’s funny that an indie book about a machine that spits out vague death predictions is supposedly feeding a culture of death.

    Maybe if Beck read the book before criticizing it, he’d know it was all in jest and good for a chuckle. But when you’re trying to promote sales of your book, and a grass-roots campaign easily trumps your marketing campaign that had $$$ put into it, I guess you’re forced to pull out all the stops.

    Had he done a little homework and realized that the MoD online campaign was a one-day only thing, he could have been the bigger man and just let it go for a day.

  11. on 28 Oct 2010 at 10:25 am 11.Stu said …

    Wait… you guys are THE LEFT? And the Machine of Death is producing a Culture of Death? And the Rolling Stones are involved? Have we all played right into the enemy’s hands?

    Have the Rolling Stones killed!

    PS I’ll regret giving this away for free, but here’s a cast-iron, solid-gold, reinforced-steel concept for a MOD sequel: exactly the same thing, except that all the means of death are Rolling Stones songs!

    ‘Brown sugar’, ‘Wild horses’, ‘Tumbling dice’ (maybe Indiana Jones-style? or a cautionary gambling tale?), ‘Street-fighting man’ (obviously), ‘Beast of Burden’ (mule? ox?), ‘Mother’s Little Helper’…

    I would say get on this one, people, but there’s no need, because THIS SHIT VERY LITERALLY WRITES ITSELF.

  12. on 28 Oct 2010 at 10:54 am 12.Malki ! said …

    @Pelotard – I think when the book hits the high rankings, Novelrank’s algorithms don’t work anymore. I can’t say exact numbers but we’re well in the thousands.

  13. on 28 Oct 2010 at 11:58 am 13.Derek said …

    You are very lucky to have never heard of Glenn Beck. I wish I could say the same.

  14. on 28 Oct 2010 at 12:05 pm 14.Kolrad said …

    Another embarrassed conservative here. I would hope that if Beck had actually read some of the stories in the book, he would have liked them as much as I do. (I am definitely planning to buy a copy soon!)

    The samples I have read are not just imaginative and interesting but very thought provoking. You don’t seem to be celebrating death, and some of the stories could actually be seen as _critical_ of a supposed “culture of death.”

    Well, anyway, congratulations on getting the book published! It is a monument to perseverance.

  15. on 28 Oct 2010 at 12:19 pm 15.Joe said …

    Anything that upsets Glenn Beck is automatically the fault of the left. Burns his waffles in the morning? It’s obviously the liberal Nazi government messing with his house’s electrical wiring, trying to assassinate him.

  16. on 28 Oct 2010 at 12:28 pm 16.ddrt said …

    I’m going to buy your book, tomorrow when I get paid, because you made fun of Glenn Beck. I wouldn’t have found your book otherwise but I hope this ferver skyrockets you back to #1

  17. on 28 Oct 2010 at 12:40 pm 17.Marcel said …

    I think it’s hilarious that in those 6 commercials there are only 4 different photographs of Glenn Beck.
    And judging by the color of his suit and the pattern of his shirt those 4 were taken on just two different occasions.
    He must be a very busy man with a wide array of interests, given that he supports them with his appearance yet doesn’t have the time to get different pictures taken.

    You’re handling these ill-informed allegations of his great. Reading the transcript of his little rant was very entertaining, served him right since he’s acting like a prima donna about it.

  18. on 28 Oct 2010 at 12:50 pm 18.Paulius1981 said …

    I couldn’t buy MoD on the 26th, but I bought it today.

    Beck is a ridiculous person, but at least he’s given us a title for the sequel.

    Who else is looking forward to buying “Hoaww! A Culture of Death!” ?

    Plus, I think we should all review his book using the same in-deph techniques he used to review MoD:

    “Broke? This is a book that’s obviously from the Right. We’re becoming a culture of breaking things.”

  19. on 28 Oct 2010 at 1:27 pm 19.jojostarbuck said …

    @paulius1981 – did it.

  20. on 28 Oct 2010 at 2:01 pm 20.Bagels said …

    Not sure how long they’ll keep it up, but here’s my review:

    It’s pretty clear that this book is helping further this country as a culture obsessed with our funds. Yep, a culture of money. As someone who’s made a living ripping off various pants lobbyists for the furthering of indecent pocket exposure, I can say I’m disgusted by this Beck person’s flagrant exploitation of those pockets as though they were mere objects. His palms displayed outward in a perfect satire of himself, Beck doesn’t realize that his dumbfounded look is not making fun of America, but rather Glenn Beck. These books will eventually end up in a used bookstore not on a shelf, but in a Broke by Beck Mountain.

  21. on 28 Oct 2010 at 2:28 pm 21.Beckett said …

    The only thing I don’t like about this post is when you apologize to Beck. I find it hilarious that he wasn’t #1 on his release day and, as someone who bought MoD on the 26th, I’m not sorry AT ALL for helping facilitate that. In fact, I may even be feeling a little pride in it!

  22. on 28 Oct 2010 at 3:33 pm 22.J. T. said …

    I disagree!

    The apology was like the best part. It’s the sort of thing you’d say when you inadvertently step on someone’s foot–after all, they didn’t even know he was there.

  23. on 28 Oct 2010 at 4:05 pm 23.Will said …

    Okay, obviously they know who Glenn Beck is. The apology is tongue-in-cheek. That’s what makes it even funnier. Learn to read between the lines.

  24. on 28 Oct 2010 at 4:55 pm 24.John M. said …

    Wow, now I’m going to buy this book and my wife’s Glenn Beck loving parents will see it on the coffee table and think that we’re pagan bisexual swinger heroin addicts or something. This is going to be awesome, and not just because everyone’s said it’s a really good read.

  25. on 28 Oct 2010 at 5:14 pm 25.Rafa said …

    I love how Lifelock, unlike the other advertisers, is a bit more honest about their relationship with this guy.

    “Glenn Beck is a paid endorser of Lifelock.”

    “We just used a picture off of one of Glenn Beck´s books and quoted a phrase he never said. And we paid him for it.”

    “He actually uses the product, though. For real.”

    Advertising magic.

  26. on 28 Oct 2010 at 5:52 pm 26.Pat said …

    Honestly, this is awesome and inspirational. You guys deserve it. Congratulations.

  27. on 28 Oct 2010 at 8:20 pm 27.Eric said …

    I just knew it!!! This whole “Death” thing is a left-wing plot. Quick! We need to elect some right-wing nut-jobs who only care about foisting responsibility onto others so they can sell their dogmatic rhetoric to the uneducated masses. Then we’ll all live forever…um…maybe.

  28. on 28 Oct 2010 at 9:52 pm 28.Becka said …

    We just bought the book because I think anything that beats out Glenn Beck’s brand of insults, ignorance and idiocy should be supported. Awesome!

  29. on 28 Oct 2010 at 11:28 pm 29.ethan said …

    i really don’t understand a single thing that Glenn Beck said in this whole review or whatever.

  30. on 29 Oct 2010 at 1:38 am 30.Bob the Balloonist said …

    I’d be upset too if I’d just been given reason to suspect that maybe I wasn’t as special as my mother used to tell me I was.

    I think the best thing to do now would be to see if you can wrangle it such that Amazon offers one of those combo discounts for people who buy Machine of Death along with Broke. It’s only fair that he gets a few extra sales from your cultists.

  31. on 29 Oct 2010 at 2:29 am 31.Pelotard said …

    I think the amazing thing is that Glenn Beck doesn’t see that when he keeps mentioning us, he keeps advertising MoD all over the place, to people who wouldn’t have heard of us otherwise.

    And tbh, Beck’s political views have very little to do with this. Because MoD isn’t a political book. He’s not only barking up the wrong tree, he’s barking up a carrot.

  32. on 29 Oct 2010 at 2:52 am 32.Dirk said …

    He’s being saying more stuff beyond that insane little rant? Where can I watch this megalomaniacal drama proceed?

  33. on 29 Oct 2010 at 3:00 am 33.Pelotard said …

    Twitter! Search for #Machineofdeath. He’s the most prolific tweeter on the topic…

  34. on 29 Oct 2010 at 3:03 am 34.Malki ! said …

    As much as I dearly want to inflame a hate-war, I suppose, in the interest of fairness I don’t know for certain that Beck himself has mentioned us again. It’s certainly possible – I’m not about to listen to hours of his show to find out, though I will send someone the MP3s if they want to – but the tweets are certainly coming from various mouthbreathing cranks and not Beck himself.

  35. on 29 Oct 2010 at 5:51 am 35.Steve said …

    These advertisements, if they’re real, remind me more and more of Krusty the Klown.

  36. on 29 Oct 2010 at 6:58 am 36.gruff said …

    Ahahaha listen to the audio, he says “You can’t always get what you want…brown sugar…er, I don’t even know what that means” hahahah the man wants to walk on the “dark side”

  37. on 29 Oct 2010 at 9:23 am 37.Alexis said …

    So…what I’m understanding here is that I can write the purchase of this book off as a political contribution for tax purposes.

  38. on 29 Oct 2010 at 9:31 am 38.Mark said …

    Does this mean that buying this book is now a political statement? ‘Cos I don’t want my reading habits to make a political statement.

  39. on 29 Oct 2010 at 10:13 am 39.Joe said …

    Well, Mr. Beck sure sold me a book. No his mind you…but it’s the thought that counts.

  40. on 29 Oct 2010 at 10:44 am 40.Byronne said …

    What’s doubly ironic here is that Beck in his youth was a coke-addicted philandering alcoholic. That is, until he became a Mormon about 10 years ago. True.

  41. on 29 Oct 2010 at 10:59 am 41.Dayton Ward said …

    You guys rock, and not just because you got Glenn Beck in a lather (that in itself isn’t really hard to do, but you earn bonus points, anyway). I’m ordering my copy of MoD RIGHT NOW!

  42. on 29 Oct 2010 at 11:02 am 42.casket salesman said …

    wow, you got the biggest idiot with the loudest bullhorn upset! that’ll sell some more books, i know i want to buy it now…seriously, this is great. I hope this doesn’t come across as sarcasm…i truly mean it!

  43. on 29 Oct 2010 at 11:22 am 43.goob said …

    Pelotard@31: Braying laughter is not attractive. Thank you for the humiliation.

    Barking up a carrot. I’m choking on my lunch now just typing it.

    For you, one internet, hand-wrapped.

  44. on 29 Oct 2010 at 11:39 am 44.Joe Beets said …

    “Lifelock”?

    with Beck, it’s more like “Brainlock”

    Didn’t I read something the other day that
    Lifelock is under investigation by the
    FTC for fraud?

    WOOT!

  45. on 29 Oct 2010 at 3:50 pm 45.pollardy said …

    so much winnnnnn this book is gonna be even more delicous to read <3

  46. on 29 Oct 2010 at 7:11 pm 46.Joandra said …

    So when will we get the “Liberal Culture of Death” t-shirts?

  47. on 30 Oct 2010 at 11:06 am 47.comandantedavid said …

    Been reading dino comics for years, and I can’t wait to read this. So glad to have helped bring this book to the top spot.

    Embarrassed conservatives: please take your movement back from the anti-intellectual demagogues! PLEASE!

  48. on 31 Oct 2010 at 3:02 am 48.basyt said …

    did people notice the brown sugar slip? if so my work here is done. goodbye.

  49. on 31 Oct 2010 at 11:33 pm 49.Josh said …

    Wow, so now Beck is claiming that a collection of science fiction short stories is evidence of the one world government conspiracy? Hmmm… y’know, it isn’t all that hard to see him as Dwayne Hoover…

    Also, excellent research work – while Glenn Beck may not be a household name in Canada (as he sadly is here in the US), you have quite readily identified what this ‘cultural icon’ stands for. Fine work, gents.

  50. on 01 Nov 2010 at 7:14 pm 50.Gordon said …

    When Glenn Beck got his results from the machine, all it said was:

    “THE LEFT”