I think Salon is one of the greatest news sources on the planet, and I read it daily.
I’ve been a subscriber for over a year, and I usually grab the newest edition when they update it around 9 p.m. my time. Last night, I was catching up on the issues I missed while I was out of town . . . when I scrolled down to “books,” I was stunned to read

Wil Wheaton’s stories and more in this week’s bestselling books, courtesy of Powells.com

Bestselling?! Wil Wheaton?! What?!! Having a bestselling book is awesome enough . . . but making the front page of Salon with it is — I don’t even know what to say.
I mean, there are 20 books on that list. Powell’s and Salon could have chosen any author’s name to use in that headline, but they chose mine! I was eating one of Nolan’s birthday cupcakes at the time, and I nearly choked (which is strangely preferable to blowing chunks of cake all over the monitor and keyboard, I suppose.)
I called Anne over, and told her, through a mouth of cupcake, how excited I was. Then, I totally cried like a sissy bitch.
As long as I have your attention about the book, the remaining 70 or so orders I screwed up back in May are shipping out today. US orders should arrive within 5 days. International orders will take about 7 days, according to the postal service.

My sister just pointed me to amigovernorornot.com . . . specifically, this charming candidate.
Sadly, this charming candidate is getting his ass kicked by WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER!!
Horror!
Terror!
Dogs and cats living together!!
I think you know what to do.
UPDATE:Score!! First place in less than an hour!!!
We must remain vigilant, however. The forces of evil and evil doers of evil are lurking everywhere!
Tomorrow, the world!
To the moon, The Cheat! TOOOOOO THHHEEEE MMMOOOONNNN!!!!111

I’m taking off until the 20th. I will do my best to audioblog while I’m /away, but I won’t have internet access. If you place a TextAd order, or anything like that, I won’t be able to approve it until then, FYI.
If you’re in or near Portland, Oregon, be sure to come out to Powell’s in Beaverton on Wednesday the 13th @ 7 p.m. I’ll be reading from, and signing Dancing Barefoot. Powell’s originally ordered 125 books for the event, and they just increased the order to 200 to meet the increasing demand!! I’m really excited about this event. I hope to see lots of WWdN readers when I’m there.

Everybody else, play nice, and don’t even think of having any parties. I have the neighbors watching you guys.

For some reason, since we moved to our new server, about 60% of my outbound e-mail is getting blackholed.
Typical messages:

Remote host said: 550 : Client host rejected: REJECT – We do not accept spam!
Connected to [IP] but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 Rejected: 66.216.97.162 listed at blackholes.intersil.net
Remote host said: 550-66.216.97.162 blocked by blacklist.mail.ops.asp.att.net. 550 Blocked for abuse. Please send blacklist removal requests to [email protected]
[IP] does not like recipient. Remote host said: 554: Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied

For those of you scoring at home, we are NOT a relay. We have never been a relay. Congressman, I can stand here before you right now and tell you, if you think we are a relay, you. Are. INSANE!
The uber-cool guys at logjamming have tried to contact the various RBLs that are blocking us, but none of the RBLs have responded. One of them went so far as to block our freakin’ request:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at logjamming2.com.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.
[email protected]:
Sorry, I wasn’t able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1) I’m not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

That’s sheer genius, osirusoft! Make us prove that we’re not an open relay, and bounce the freakin’ e-mail we send to prove it! Hooray for self-fulfilling prophecies!
Thanks a lot, Spammers. It’s bad enough that you clog my inbox with shit. Now you’re screwing up the Internet so badly, legit e-mails get killed.
Freakin’ brilliant.
UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out to me that the RBL issue is because of Rackspace, not WWdN or logjamming. I had no idea that Rackspace was so spammer-friendly. That sucks the most. It was also brought to my attention that I misread the qmail error (don’t tell anyone, okay? It will reveal to the world what a lameass non-technical-pseudo-geek I am) about osirusoft. They didn’t block our request. Our mailserver just timed out.
None of this changes my feelings about spammers, though. While we are all annoyed by the proliferation of junk mail, and its continued invasion of our inboxes, this problem of innocent people getting caught up in RBLs and the like is something I’ve never thought about until it happened to me.
Therefore, on behalf of the Internet, I would like to invite all the spammers in the world to kindly fuck themsleves.
And don’t cuddle after, you bastards.

I’m going to be at Powell’s Beaverton store in Beaverton, Oregon on Wednesday. I’ll be reading from and signing copies of Dancing Barefoot. I’ve been excited about this event since the day it was booked, and that excitement has grown exponentially over the past few weeks.
Well, excitement just hit a whole new level: Powell’s initially ordered 125 books for the event . . . and they just ordered an additional 75!!
I was so excited when the order came in, I did a little dance. Then I read this, and I did a much larger dance.
Then I read THIS and I shit myself.
While dancing.
I did the happy shit dance.
Just me and Domokun, trilwing around my living room like Beauty and the Beast.
It was freakin’ beautiful. A tale as old as time.