So far I have bound 40. I am waiting for some more Washi before putting covers on the rest next week. The rest will ship then.

It looks like the limited first edition of 50 copies will sell out this week.  There are about 10  left right now. Or so. Give or take. I haven’t checked my email in the last two minutes to see if any new orders have come in, so one never knows.

More info on the book and ordering on this page here.

You can read a little more about the book here. You can also order the book online from that page, and there is a flickr slide show of all the covers so far. There is some variety, and if you have any preferences you can let me know, but orders will be filled on a first-come-first-serve basis so there is no guarantee you will get the exact book you want.

Only 50, give or take a couple, copies of this hand-bound first edition will be produced. So you might want to order soon.

There is a flickr set showing the covers etc here.

The book is 82 pages, unnumbered, and chock full of neat illustrations by Bran.

The price is €16, which is about $23.50 depending on exchange rates, and includes shipping and handling to anywhere in the world.

Any nice comments may be posted in the comments to this post. Any questions etc should probably be mailed to metamorphosist (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!

You too, kids. Oh, hang on. Start without me. I have to go take care of something real quick.

(Loots Halloween candy stash)

K I’m back.

Positive thoughts, like, you go to yoga and your wallet doesn’t get stolen. (Poor Alpha)

You don’t yell at the dental hygienist on the phone, or at the skinhead bank director who whacks your car with his door in the parking lot, or at the lady who almost backs over you in the other parking lot. (Poor various people)

No sick kids.

No barfing cats.

No all stressed out about stuff.

No stomache ache.

Book release!! Woot!

There’s something to look forward to. This weekend, probably. I might buy some wasabi nuts, open the deluxe bottle of Jameson and have a release party with, well, the cats I guess. Alpha will be in Japan, Beta seems to be ill and Gamma doesn’t drink whiskey yet.

• The book (Little-Known Facts) is back from the printer
• I am currently binding it by hand
• Bookbinding is a lot more work than I expected (the red thread never wants to go through the needle, the other colors are okay)
• But also fun
• I am working on a site (page) where you can order and pay online, using Paypal, which accepts all major credit cards, I think
• This also requires me to set a price, and decide how to handle postage
• Despite my tendency towards unnecessary complication (every one of the books has a different cover (I will be posting pictures soon)), I’d like to do this latter as simply as possible.
• Some of the covers, so far, are made of Japanese paper. Some are made from handmade watercolor paper. Some of the latter are colored by me. Some are embossed with a fish. Some have an imitation gold-leaf fish on them. One has a genuine gold-leaf fish, and paw prints.
• Last night I carved a squid mold from some linoleum to emboss some with a giant squid. Gamma thought it looked cool. Alpha likes the fish better (she also thinks I’m overdoing this). Something for everyone.
• More soon. I hope to have the order page online by the start of next week.

I may also include a bonus surprise in each book, but not sure about that yet.

I would charge around ten Euro per book, which is about 14 U.S. dollars at current rates of exchange, plus postage. Payment would probably have to be via Paypal, unless someone trusts me with cash or has a better idea.
I have a figure in my mind, a certain number of books I would produce. They would be numbered individually. What I would like to know from you is if my number is high or low. How many of you would be interested in buying how many copies of this book?

• Most important fact: the sheepshead porgy belongs to the Sparidae family, so don’t fucking fuck with it.
• According to Wikipedia, the sheepshead porgy is the most celebrated sea bream, culinarily. Hence the picture here, geddit?
• Also according to Wikipedia, the sheepshead porgy is found only in the Atlantic, and “its teeth are of like a sheep’s.”
• That’s all.
• But according to the Internet, the sheepshead porgy, or Calamus penna, is also sometimes called a mutton snapper, making it one of few marine creatures with multiple cool names.
• Seriously. “Hey, you little mutton snappers, get off my lawn!”
• The sheepshead porgy likes it warm, so we’re talking Gulf, Caribbean, South America, stuff like that.
• Max. length = 46 cm, max. published weight 1 kg.
• Driving to work this morning, the sheepshead porgy saw a billboard advertising a newspaper, reading, in large letters, “Mehr Trends, mehr Lifestyle, mehr TV”, and wondered if that was likely in the current day and age. More trends? The sheepshead porgy imagined a trend to fewer trends and less lifestyle, and more authenticity. The sheepshead porgy imagined people getting sick of TV, and the Internet, and other entertainment, and taking things into their own hands. The sheepshead porgy became giddy, and just missed a streetcar.
• The sheepshead porgy also imagined a trend toward finally taxing, significantly, dumbfucks with so much money they have nothing better to do with it than speculate with it on Wall St. The sheepshead porgy differentiates between investors, who invest in companies, which is a useful activity, and jackasses who are just speculating in order to get rich. If they have nothing better to do with their money than that, they should be relieved of it by society, which does have something better to do with it, namely build an infrastructure, feed the starving, educate the seething masses, shorten the work week, build grocery rockets, good stuff like that.
• Juveniles often found in sea grass. Juvenile delinquents often found loitering in convenience store parking lots.
• It is silvery, and marketed fresh and frozen.

• First off, the term “limpet” is inexact, referring to salt- and freshwater gastropods with lungs or gills.
• If you mean a marine limpet of the ancient order, you have to say “true limpet”.
• Although “marine limpet of the ancient order” sounds sort of cool by itself.
• Conical shells, mostly under 3″ in diameter, stuck to rocks or other hard substrates, often covered with growth of algae making them even harder to see, etc etc.
• Ambivalent by nature, the true limpet currently thinks maybe everyone ought to vote for McCain after all, on sort of a variant of the “you break it you buy it” rule, namely, “you break it, you keep breaking it until everyone figures it out, then you eat it if they have to shove it down your throat, then you leave them alone for a long time.”
• Or, maybe not, on second thought. The true limpet would feel a lot better about voting for Obama, though, if he could be certain that the Democrats would not just, once again, drain yet another Republican quagmire and then go back to business as usual, but instead make them regret creating a quagmire in the first place, really put them off the idea of making any more in the future. You know, like, punitive taxes on those responsible for the Wall St. mess (by which the true limpet does not mean poor home buyers), or laws to finally make corporations subject to punishment for misdeeds, including real fines that hurt, freezes on all activity (akin to imprisoning human evildoers) all the way up to permanent confiscation of all assets for capital (hrhr) crimes.
• The true limpet is also wondering how much it ought to worry about the Mayan calendar and December 2012, and whether the surface of a rock in the intertidal zone is the safest place to be if this is right.
• True limpets invented the term “clampdown”: when they really clamp down, brute force alone is insufficient to remove them from their rock. The limpet would rather be squished than let go of its rock. They are, however, often susceptible to sweet talk.
• Most limpets graze on algae.