In response to my post “Penguins,” My Blasphemous Christian Book, Finally Returns Home, I received a couple of emails from people wondering what a writer can do to protect his or her work from being stolen by a literary agent. I’m actually asked that pretty often, so I thought I’d take a moment to answer it here. Before you send your manuscript or book proposal to an agent, be sure to first thoroughly research that agent, via the web and... Read more
The story of my first book, “Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang: Why I Do the Things I Do, by God” (as told to John Shore), is so unbelievable that you’d swear I made it up. It involves, for instance: A Christian agent stealing the idea for the book, giving it to a more established Christian author, and that author—knowing the book’s origins—gladly running with the idea (and ultimately using it to create a truly awful book published and heavily... Read more
Hello there, Muslims! My name is John Shore. I live in San Diego, California. In case you’re not American (what with the web being so world-wide, and all), San Diego is very far down in Southern California, almost where it meets Mexico. Please forgive this geographical detail if you already knew it. As an American myself, I naturally assume that nobody else in the world knows anything about geography, either. Ha, ha, ha. That is a joke at the expense... Read more
Maybe it's time (we) Christians quit pretending like we're so filled with the Holy Spirit that we've essentially risen above the rawness of our sexuality. Read more
Show me a man who says he doesn't look lustfully at women ALL THE TIME and I'll show you a man who's either lying or gay. Read more
A couple of years ago a friend of mine showed me a stack of photocopied cartoons featuring a dog named Stinky (www.stinkydog.com), created and drawn by Samantha McCullough. I instantly fell in love with the image of Stinky. I was so enthused that I contacted Sam, and asked her if there was anything I could do to participate in the great fun that was clearly All Things Stinky. She then read some of my stuff, and together we decided that... Read more
I’d say the Christians I know are pretty evenly split between conservative and liberal. One of the things I like about the conservative Christians I know is how clear they are about what they believe and think. They know what the Bible says; they know who they are; they know what they’re doing in life. They’re solid. The whole “backbone of America” thing is no joke; the strongest trees, after all, have the deepest roots. Not a lot of wafflers... Read more
Lately some have complained that I (via posts like this,this, and this) have been entirely too obnoxious to New Agers. To which I say: Hey, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the supernova. But that’s really more of an astronomy joke. Which, as you see, are impossible to make funny. Unlike astrology jokes, which even Dick Cheney could make hilarious. As an example of just how easy it is to make Top Notch Comedy Jokes about astrology, here... Read more
This is “Blue Boy,” by the immortal comic artist (from Mad magazine’s halcyon days) Don Martin. Every time I look at this, it just kills me. Growing up, Don Martin’s work meant the world to me. It showed me just how funny funny could be. As I wrote a bit about here, for Christmas of 2007 my wife got me the ultimate Don Martin collection. Man, that girl knows how to pick gifts. This is a crappy scan of this... Read more
As I write this, my wife Cat is in the kitchen making spaghetti sauce. I just said to her, “Are you feeling saucy?” In response she gave me that look she gives me when she wants to help me understand the wearying depth of her burden. (more…) Read more
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