BOOKWAR

Yesterday, @ryannorth​, I vowed to dig up EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER WRITTEN and SHOVE IT into the cold light of day.

Today, crammed into a shoebox deep in a file drawer with a bunch of other stuff from 2006, I found this – the script for Friends Forever Till the Universe Explodes. Ryan, I don’t know if you had forgotten completely about this, but I had.

Seeing it all wrinkled and worn brought a flood of memories back. Laughing in restaurants – my first visit to Toronto when we walked around downtown and tried to get onto the roof of that hospital or whatever it was – your first visit to Los Angeles when we got stuck trying to navigate the same intersection in Silverlake for like fifteen minutes – laughing, joking, getting to know one another…and then the realization, in the middle of a Whispered Apologies-related conversation as I recall, that we had the makings of a show.

Writing. Revising. Rehearsing. Being unable to decide whether to hold the show in Los Angeles or Toronto, then coming up with the brilliant idea (for a couple of 25-year-olds) that we should split the difference and hold it in Sutherland, Nebraska, exactly halfway between the two!

It was such a fiasco that we vowed never to speak of it again. Well, I’m sorry, Ryan. I’m sorry that I’m breaking that promise now. I’m sorry that I won’t forget about the thing that brought us together. I’m sorry that I forgot before.

I’m sorry.

It’s already been well established that Ryan North has written a number of previously-unknown books that, taken as the work of a career as a whole, paint him as a very strange individual (to be as charitable as possible).

But let’s be honest, Ryan. You didn’t think I – or anyone – would ever find out about your college-era, boutique-press Bildungsroman: an oh-so-precious chapbook written under a pretentious pair of you-thought-unGooglable initials, printed in a positively decadent run of 85 copies (according to the footer on each and every page)…and which is completely unavailable on Abebooks, Bibliofind, Alibris, WorldCat, The Book Depository, and Indiebound.

But not the mighty Amazon.

It arrived today.

HA HA HA HA !!! I’VE GOT YOU NOW !!! HA HA HA HA HA LOOK AT THAT PICTURE ! ! ! ! ! 

THIS WILL NEVER STOP. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GOING TOO FAR.” I WILL DIG UP EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER WRITTEN AND

DE

STROY

I found this old book by @ryannorth in a 25¢ bargain bin. It looked untouched, like it had never even been unboxed. 

More curiously still, the bargain bin was at a lamp store.

I opened the cover and the hinge crackled with stiffness. The pages were glossy and thick – surely many trees were sacrificed for their decadence. 

According to the back cover, books #1-3 in the “Messin’ Things Up™” series are:

Messin’ Things Up (this appears to be the original, with individual chapters on breaking rocks with hammers, setting up tripwires in the forest, and blasting beekeeper’s smoke at more than just bees)    

Messin’ Things Up 2: Preserving Spiderwebs Between Plexiglas®

Messin’ Things Up 3: Throwing Old Computers Into Icy Rivers For The Locals to Find Come Spring

The book comes with a CD packaged inside the back cover, but it’s cracked in half, so I threw it into a vacant lot and spray-painted a big X over it, like Ryan would have wanted.

I was at the Used And Terrible Bookstore today, looking for last-minute gifts for my least favorite relatives, and WHAT should I come across but another “manifesto” by self-proclaimed “multiple author” Ryan North!

Here are a few GEMS I transcribed from the introduction:

Where the 20th century was industrial, the 21st century shows every sign of becoming feudal. In this book, I present proven facts and techniques for success in this exotic new world, passed down by generations of grandmasters and warriors from the East. I’ve studied every single ninja fighting game, from Ninja Gaiden, to Ninja Gaiden 2, to others. I’ve successfully started and shut down over seven companies just in the last 26 months. AND I live in Canada, which is often called “the Orient of the Americas”. 

In this book you will learn to sneak around your competitors’ business strategies….conceal your true motives from possible corporate threats…poison people metaphorically who might want to see you fail literally…and leap from rooftop to rooftop of the pagodas of your own career. You will need to climb on walls with foot-claws to stay ahead in business — and I will show you how!

Additionally, in case you haven’t purchased this book’s companion VHS tape, I have helpfully reprinted a series of video stills in the appendix (pages 245-370). 

Ah, so! Are YOU ready to stop bowing and scraping to your bosses and rivals, and start coolly and awesomely swording and starring your way to victory? Narrow your eyes for the coming battle…Nip bad habits in the bud…Repair chinks in your own armor…And turn your shogun into sho’nuff: the NORTHUTSU way!!

REALLY, Ryan? “Nip” bad habits? “Chinks” in your armor?? There’s also a whole chapter on “yellow fever” that CLAIMS to be an elaborate treatise on the viral plague, complete with illustrations of mosquitoes, but WHAT’S IT DOING in a business book???

Wait…I just noticed the back cover reads “Never before have so many outrageously cartoonish racisms been collected unconsciously in one book for satirical and not-serious intent! What a satire, ha ha!!” It’s written on a sticker that was applied to the book AFTER it was printed.

All that said, I’ve started following some of the tips, and my QTD receivables are up 25% over Q3 so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Another thing: his body really IS that strangely proportioned, I’ve both seen it with my own eyes AND heard his wife whisper quietly yet incredulously about it to my wife!!

I was going through my email archives to try to figure out how I ended up here when I came across this old ebook file I’d forgotten about!  I’d never noticed it before, but it turns out David Malki emailed it to me years ago with the following message:

"From one ‘follower’ to another…. this one’s on the house, Ryan!!!  PS: you owe me now.  DM me sometime!!!!"

- “DM” (like “direct message” but instead it’s “David Malki”!!!!!) 

David, even though it is years late, I have several comments about this book and your follow-up messages about it (and again, sorry for not reading them until now):

you don’t need to capitalize “.com”.  

putting # and @ in front of words does not make them ‘high-technology words’

no you do not need to repaint that plane every time you get a new follower

no I do not know a good place to get a deal on bulk plane paint

no I do not know whether or not the “plane police” have authority to chase you away from the airport parking lot since it’s not in the sky but I’m guessing yes, yes they do

and finally, your other ebook, “Are You There God?  Please RT” is actually a wonderful coming-of-age story about a young girl struggling with boys, bras, periods, AND religion while simultaneously trying to grow her social media reach with high-clickability viral content, and I would be more than happy to provide a quote for that one

BUT HMMM WHAT DID SOME PROPS DEPARTMENT PRINT OUT AND GIVE YOU TO HOLD IN THIS STOCK PHOTO SHOOT FOR “WEALTHY SOCIAL MEDIA BUSINESSMAN” IMAGES ?????

I was at the library over the weekend, and they have all kinds of crazy books there! I was browsing the ‘eroticized autobiography’ section, hoping to find some inspiration, when I came across THIS book by RYAN NORTH.

Inside the front cover, the dedication starts right up with an indication of what’s to come:

This book is shouted from the rooftops at all the haters, all the squares, all the sugar-pushers, all the downtown cruisers, all the eagle-boys, all the late-night mamas, all the daddies with their packs on, all the servers, all the waiters, all the rack babies, all the dollar hustlers, all the soda jerkoffs, all the brownstains, all the bronyboys, all the nerdlovers, all the sandy wigglers, and all the 3am jonesin’ candyattic crashers who made this ride as real as it got.

I think that last bit is a reference to Joey Comeau but as for the rest ???

I wanted to check it out and read more but it was ‘REFERENCE ONLY’ and also it was really, like, sticky? That may have just been my library’s copy BUT in the colophon it also says:

Titles set in Ostrich Sans

Text set in Curlz MT

Coated in Rio Grande sticky wax

Each copy kissed by the author or his representative

I’ve already got ENOUGH copies of stuff kissed by Ryan or his representative so I said NO THANK YOU

man it figures that Malki would stand up for both the daddies with their packs on AND the sandy wigglers, no surprise there

Rio Grande sticky wax is a great deal, especially in bulk

Curlz MT is beautiful and I’m so sorry you can’t see that David Malki and I know you probably think you’re SO COOL by saying you hate it just like you hate Comic Sans just like everyone else (CONFORM MUCH??) but I bet you couldn’t tell me why you hate it just that the LAMEstream Media told you to and yeah I bet you’ve got opinions about Papyrus too, BIG surprise there, but maybe next time before opening your mouth you open your EYES to how beautiful type can be??

For example an old poem got finally FULLY REALIZED here thanks to a little thing called me and another little other thing called oh I don’t know CURLZ MT:

I rest my case

It’s been a while since I came across one of David’s books, but I’ve been busy!  So busy, in fact, that I thought a nice break would be to sit down at my local library and read some jokes,  But look what I found, (ironically??) placed in the humour section!!

Just a couple of things:

 It’s cool how you call out your competition, but calling people who use Rosetta Stone “Rosetta Stoners” was actually kinda mean

 I thought “laff” was just a “funny spelling”, but inside “laugh” is spelled variously as “laff”, “lauff”, “laaf”, “laaaf”, and “läf”

Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs evolved in different areas of the earth, at different times, and most likely evolved independently, so all that Egypt stuff on your cover is, like, wrong

holy crap, David, this is the fourth time you’ve done this??

finally, and perhaps most importantly, WRITING ENGLISH IN A CUNEIFORM FONT ON YOUR COMPUTER IS NOT WRITING IN CUNEIFORM.

Also, all these jokes seem to be plagiarized from old Reader’s Digest “Humor in Uniform” sections and OH WAIT NEVERMIND I GET IT

The title’s foward-facing drop shadow doesn’t respect the light being cast by the Outer Glow of the first line OR the numeral. There are a lot of terrible things that I might do in life, but mix up drop shadow directions is NOT one of them;

Actually that’s all I have.

Ryan, in times like these, I’m reminded of the ancient Mesopotamian proverb:

When I enlisted in my teens, I took up smoking cigars to make myself look more mature.

Did it work? Well, one time, as I proudly puffed away at our NCO club, an older 
sergeant growled, “Hey, kid, your candy bar’s on fire.”

- James Bushart, Cassville, Missouri

Ryan, I had no idea

Is this why the seal of the royal warrant is on those kid-leather gloves of yours????

So I stopped by a garage sale on my way to an unrelated garage I’m interested in purchasing and picked up this book by David.  It’s the first fiction (??) I’ve read by him!

David, here is my review!

THE GOOD: 

I liked how you described your costume as “leaving nothing to the imagination, except perhaps how the faces I’d make would look as you slowly cut me out of it”

colophon was complete and well-detailed

THE BAD:

the way you kept saying “THIS IS REAL AND IS GOING TO HAPPEN!!” at least once per chapter

the way you wrote “(WOW!!)” after each one of your superhero feats as if you, the writer, were amazed by your own imagination?

the way you kept using “IRL” and how you kept writing “(that’s short for ‘in real life’)” afterwards every single time

THE WEIRD:

telling librarians where to file the book on the cover

the fact you made me your sidekick but kept describing me as “the handsome, more powerful one”??

ending seemed a bit forced

In your haste to criticize this book, I see you entirely skipped the prologue, which provides important contextual clues for all the pages that follow!

You see, Ryan, this book is in fact a transcript of a dream I had as a teenager, which was so weird and interesting that I thought everyone else should know about it!! In most of it I thought I was in my high school, but it was also kind of like my mom’s house, but my first boss was also there? CRAZY, HUH????? I describe it all at length, in the book!!

My alarm went off at the end which is why the climactic boss battle resolves with “I had to leap up and go pee all of a sudden. TO BE CONTINUED????” which is totally a valid literary device!

"Former relationship expert Ryan North takes you on a truth-spittin’, no-holds-barred journey through the frontiers of the genderclash…Finally daring to describe fundamental natural laws that the P.C. police (and Obama-style self-appointed guardians of ‘politeness’) would rather be forgotten!

"Learn about:

• The 12 Rules Of Power Play (Hint: There’s more than 12!)

• What Penguins Do In Private – And Why We Don’t Do The Same (Anymore)

• Five ‘Magic’ Words That Guarantee She’ll Never Forget You, Ever

• The Rule Of Archimedes – In The Bedroom And The Boardroom And The Boardwalk And Park Place, Too…If You Want It, Take It!

• Wandering Womb Syndrome – Ancient Myth Or Mere Superstition? Or Something More?

• Giving Her The ‘Secret Loyalty Test’ – Before She Gives It To You

• Beat Any Paternity Suit! How To Microwave Your DNA – For Good

• Nineteen Spam-Filter-Beating Synonyms For ‘Misandry’ That Have Increasingly Cruel Connotations

• How To Deserve Any Job You Want – From Birth

• ‘I Can’t Be An Asshole If I’m Right’ – Proving This Old Maxim With Ironclad Logic

• The #1 Haircut For Getting Married – And Staying Married, If That’s What You Want

• I’m Sorry, But You Should Never Apologize. And That’s A Canadian Speaking!”

The book I wrote was called NOT ALL POKÉMEN and was a documentary about Pokémon and the men who catch them (they call themselves “Pokémen”)

(but it was only about some of them, because there are a lot of Pokémen out there and I was up against a deadline)

ALSO FOR THE RECORD THERE IS ONLY ONE KIND OF -ANDRY I’M INTERESTED IN, AND IT IS

A lot of David’s “Wondermark” Malki’s books that I’ve come across have been embarrassing or mean to me forNO REASON but this is the first of his books that I’m actually REALLY into!  This is awesome!!

I’d never heard of Horsey Race 64 (there’s not even an entry for it on the Mario Wiki, which is NUTS) but check out these interview excerpts from David’s book:

Nintendo’s offices at that time were open, but everyone had their own cubicle.  People would move around, depending on what projects were being worked on.  Me and a few other developers had worked out this - demo, I guess you’d call it, where Mario was a horse, and Bowser was a horse, and everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom was a horse now too.  We saw it as a culmination of Miyamoto’s dream of Centaur Mario, which we’d been unable to realize for Mario 3…

…I’d implemented most of the gaits: walk, trot, canter, but gallop was giving me trouble to get it just right.  I’d called [Tom] over to help me get Mario’s trot just right when the higher-ups noticed a bunch of us crowded around my desk.  His scent was intoxicating…

…At first everyone was excited about this game that we were calling Okay, Wow, Mario’s A Horse Now.  We’d only implemented Horsio, Horsuigi, Horsecess Peach, and King HorseBowser, but we had a pet-and-groom mode for each that, years later, would be recycled for Nintendogs…

…you could form this really meaningful relationship with our members of the Horseroom Kingdom: they’d remember who you were and how you’d treated them in the past.  You built up trust with them.  Several devs were caught staying late just to program in some extra treats for their favourite horses (and yes, I admit, I slipped Horsey Kong a few extra apples here and there)…

…we’d built a Grand Prix mode (named “Sheesh! Who’s The Fastest Horse??”) where you could walk, canter, or trot in a big circle, and it was about that time when the higher-ups started asking if we could strap motors to the horses to make them go faster, and maybe add wheels to them too.  I began to realize something had gone very, very wrong at Nintendo…

…”Excuse me, but I think you mean ‘It matters who has sex with WHOM’ if it causes office drama”, I said, but [Min] talked right over my correction, AGAIN…

…the bananas were the last vestige of our original design, left over from when they were character-specific treats for the noble Horsecess Peach. Nintendo wanted them cut, but Miyamoto said he’d quit then and there unless they were left in.  He loved his Horsecess, and even though all her data had been erased [on Black Thursday], he wanted her memory to survive.  He put his job on the line for her, for those big ol’ bananas she loved so much.  And those of us in “the stable” loved him for it…

I could type out the whole book here!  Super fascinating.  Thanks for the book, David!!

Ryan, I have just one question, and it is “Why was this in the ‘autobiography’ section”

Actually, one follow-up: “What will your Patreon money be going toward, exactly”