I get strange books in my mailbox

I must be a magnet for madness. The latest treasure to manifest itself in my mail is a book by Stefano Polidori called The Chaos Riders. It may be a rare artifact; it's not listed on Amazon, but it's expensively bound with an inset photograph of Da Vinci's The Last Supper on the cover, with thick glossy pages and profuse color illustrations throughout, but no publisher is listed anywhere. It's hot off the vanity press.

I have tried to read bits and pieces of it. I was a bit put off by the translator's remarks that claim the author is a scientist, but the first words in the preface are Polidori proudly telling us that he doesn't read anyone else's work, and the last book he read was Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and by the way, he dropped out of university because he "refused to accept others telling me how my brain should work."

I was not able to figure out why the book is called The Chaos Riders or even what it is about. I did learn that Stefano Polidori possesses the reincarnated soul of John William Polidori, and that he vibrates at the same frequency of the prior Polidori, which attracts UFOs to hover over him. He carries a mutation which equipped his brain with an electromagnetic transmitter, which allows telepathy. He's also obsessed with a friend named Henrik Dreyer, who knows a lot about past lives and gets his information by talking with plants. He does nicely spill the beans on the current identities of the reincarnated Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, in case you're looking to commission some poetry.

But there's something else that's notable about this book, that simply blew my mind when I opened it and leafed through the pages.

The entire book, every word, is typeset in Comic Sans.

You doubt me. No one could be that mad, you think. But I tell you, it is so! And you can trust me, after all, since I am the reincarnated Hypatia of Alexandria, and you know she'd never tell a lie. Like a true skeptic, though, even that isn't good enough, so I am currently broadcasting images of this book via my mutant electromagnetic transmitter brain, images that will be displayed on the undersurfaces of passing UFOs like advertising on the Goodyear Blimp, so just look up.

What, you still doubt me? You must have only limited, mundane senses. Therefore, to aid the handicapped, here is a scan of page 97. Behold!

i-191191b45ff4ac68ce752f0915737338-polidori.jpeg

Oh, yeah, Polidori is also a misogynistic wanker.

Tags

More like this

I've kept this research paper in the archives for too long. Converging topics as diverse as bioethics and Gothic literature, it was one of the most enjoyable papers I've ever had to write. What better day could there be to bring it out of the shadows, than Halloween? Even though I wrote it over a…
Hypatia  --  Influential Mathematician and Philosopher --Perhaps the first woman to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics --Murdered by her adversaries Her influence as a mathematician, philosopher and teacher  in ancient Alexandria, Egypt --at a time when opportunities…
This is a kind of cephalart quickie, two images that are perfect for Pharyngula. If I had rooms here I'd hang them in ornate frames surrounded by expensive lighting. Here is the patron saint of Pharyngula, St Architeuthis, by Skot Olsen. This one is so beautiful it brings a tear to me eye; the…
I'm still grading, but Bikemonkey tagged me on a book meme and I really want to cross something off my to-do list tonight, so here it is. The rules: books you've read in bold and books you started but never quite finished in italics. (In that latter category, I'll include books from which I've…