Assorted news and announcements

George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois announced on Monday another of their well-received themed anthologies.  Unlike Dangerous Women and the forthcoming Rogues, their next anthology, the tentatively-titled Epode, will be devoted to modern epic poetry.  Writers mentioned as possibilities include China Miéville, Steven Erikson, R. Scott Bakker, Martin, Patricia McKillip, Toby Barlow, and Terry Goodkind.

Quirk Books has announced their latest mash-up and this one promises to be their strangest and most disturbing one yet.  Titled The 120 Days of Sodom Decision Points, it is a merging of the Marquis de Sade's infamous book and former US President George W. Bush's memoirs.  Below is a sample:

I awoke the next morning with a mean hangover. As I left for my daily jog, I couldn't remember much of the night before.  About halfway through the run, my head started to clear. The crosscurrents in my life came into focus. For months I had been praying that God would show me how to better reflect His will. My Scripture readings had clarified the nature of temptation and the reality that the love of earthly pleasures could replace the love of God. My problem was not only drinking; it was selfishness. The booze was leading me to put myself ahead of others, especially my family.  I then met Julie.  Julie was tall, well made although quite fat and fleshy, had the most lovely brown eyes in the world, a charming nose, striking and gracious features, the most beautiful chestnut brown hair, a fair body of the most appetizing fullness, an ass which might easily have served as a model to the one Praxiteles sculpted, her cunt was hot, strait, and yielded as agreeable a sensation as such a locale ever may; her legs were handsome, her feet charming, but she had the worst-decked mouth, the foulest teeth, and was by habit so dirty in every other part of her body, and principally at the two temples of lubricity, that no other being, let me repeat it, no other being but the Président, himself subject to the same shortcomings and unquestionably fond of them, nay, no one else, despite her allurements, could have put up with Julie.  Dick Cheney, however, was mad about her; his most divine pleasures were gathered upon that stinking mouth, to kiss it plunged him into delirium, and as for her natural uncleanliness, far from rebuking her for it, to the contrary he encouraged her in it, and had finally got her accustomed to a perfect divorce from water.  To these faults Julie added a few others, but they were surely less disagreeable:  she was a vast eater, she had a leaning toward drunkenness, little virtue, and I believe that had she dared try it, whoredom would have held little by way of terror for her.

Julie gained little by gaining the Président, whose prick, as we know, was exceedingly thick and, furthermore, however much she was dirty from neglect of herself, she could not in any wise keep up with a filthiness in debauch such as the one that distinguished the Président.  Five years later, I can barely write those words without feeling disgusted.  I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today.

Finally, Axl Rose announced today a follow-up to his too-long-awaited 2008 G'n'R album, Chinese Democracy.  Called Squirrelocracy, it is believed that tracks date all the way back to the 20th century.  Dr. Pepper immediately announced a promotion in which it would give out a free 12 oz. Dr. Pepper if Rose actually managed to release the album before the Rise of the Squirrels or whenever democracy comes to America, whichever comes first.