A funny thing happened…

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

…on the way to check my post office box last night.

I let it lapse. I hadn’t checked it since mid-January because I am a near-shut-in and pretty content with being a hermit. Sadly, my renewal came up at the end of February and my key no longer worked.

I am not the most organized person but I evidently am endearing in person. I showed up today, prayed I would land on the pleasant older woman and not the surly dude who hates everyone but me most of all. My prayers were answered. The older lady remembers me fondly, specifically from the time one of you weirdos sent me a ‘zine so disturbing that the postal workers at my branch interpreted it as a potential threat and made me go get it at the counter just to make sure I was okay with receiving content like that in the mail.

It may seem like I made the above up, but I promise you it’s all true. So in a way, it’s good that unlikely things get sent to me because it meant she remembered me specifically as the girl who gets weird stuff. I don’t know if she bent the rules for me or if I slid in under the wire, but I was able to get my box back. It wouldn’t open because it had been “plugged,” not because the lock had been changed.

I was not prepared for the sheer number of books waiting for me. Most were review copies, and I cannot wait to read them.

But I also received books from my Amazon wish list from a reader with the initials ECA. I tried to look you up, ECA, so I could send you a personal e-mail to tell you how touching and humbling it was that you sent me these books, but I hit an e-brick wall. Sorry.  If you’ve left a comment here before, I apologize for not recognizing you.  Please know this female, animal-loving, cat/dog/anything with scales-rescuing, skeptical, atheist, liberal, writer and book lover really appreciated the gesture and will be discussing half the books here and half on my new skeptic site when it launches sometime in the next ten years or so. Maybe less if I start to use some sort of online calendar and organize myself to some degree.

I am not a person who handles praise well and I sort teared up when I saw that someone had spent their hard-earned money buying me books because they connected with something I wrote, or were entertained in some manner.  It really is very humbling.  This site can at times be a mild pain in the ass but for the most part, this site brings me so much happiness and has allowed me to meet so many interesting people. Thank heavens I followed through that night when I was all, “I should totally start a blog devoted to weird books.”

9 thoughts on “A funny thing happened…

    1. Never figured out who sent it either, or I would have written about it here. I usually only feature things that others can also obtain in some format.

      I guess sometimes art doesn’t need an attribution or credit.

    2. And you know what NOW is the most astonishing thing about this post? I went back and looked at the LJ post where you show the ‘zine in question. I made basically the same comment there two years ago.

      So I was stunned that ‘zines were still around, then forgot they were still around, then became stunned once more. I hate getting old.

      1. HA!

        But it is remarkable that ‘zines are still around. It bears mentioning twice or even five or six times!

  1. Huh, the zine came from Ames. I went to college there. Though I had already graduated when that zine was sent to you. That was in ’10 though, and I can say I’d never seen anything like that while I was living there.

    I’m still in Iowa, I’ve lived here for the majority of my life, but in Des Moines now. Could I get the address from where that zine came from? I’d love to be able to contact the person responsible for it.

    There’s a new Des Moines based literary magazine coming out soon. The inaugural issue is going to have one of my stories in it (assuming nothing goes wrong between now and then). I’ll try to send you a copy when it comes out.

    1. I had whited out the address on the copy I have in my Flickr account so I’ll try to find my original. It would be sooooo awesome if you ran to ground who it was who sent it because the address was a locksmith. I can’t help but sort of want there to be an interesting locksmith who creates these ‘zines and sends them to random people he (or she) finds on the internet, sort of like Joe K’s Being or Nothingness.

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