Jared's Newest Mack Bolan Super Find

     My mom sent me the above pictures when she was out with my brother Jared. If you don't follow his latest obsession, scroll to the bottom of this post to catch up on his quest to collect all the Mack Bolan, Executioner, and Stony Man novels in existence.

     Back to the books.

     He found 72 books total, most of which he did not have, and he completed his Executioner series out with a bang. At Goodwill prices, .99 cents each, minus 10% his wife's card, I'd say its a pretty good deal. I have been in similar situations where I have found a ton of books to complete my series, and they really were not in my price range, and outside of my daily budget. I'm glad he could get them all and not comprise the find.. often times you go back after cherry picking some and realize someone else had bought them. This really held me back when I was trying to complete my Forgotten Realms Series.

    Mom helped him get all the stickers off, damn you Goodwill and your stickers. At least they are easy to remove and don't leave too much crap behind. Overall a really good find, and good opportunity to pick up some stuff to trade and sell later to get more books (doubles).

Jared Part 1 - Jared Part 2 - Jared Part 3 - Jared Part 4 - Jared Part 5

I almost forgot...

*Edit* His Phoenix Force collection is complete, not whatever else I said. Sorry.
*Edit 2* It's MACK Bolan. Bolan rhymes with colon.

Book prices are.. too damned high!

    I'm late to the "A Game of Thrones" train. I do own a few old paperbacks of R.R. Martin's but nothing significant. I'm not a big TV watcher, and only watch TV while I'm eating dinner with my wife downstairs, so I miss out on most of office conversations about Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. I decided before I would watch the series which I recently acquired, I would read the books which should take me about a week, then I'll commit the time to the series.

     I have not bought a new book in a very, very long time. I worked at Books-a-million for a short stint in 2001 as assistant manager, and that might be the last time I bought a new book. New releases were about $16.95-$19.99 for the big releases. This week I made a trip out to Barnes & Noble to pick up the books, for about the amount that I paid in 2001. I figured there would be some kind of bundle deal, and I could pick up all of them for around.. $60-ish. Man was I wrong.

 

     The price on the sleeve of each book was $39.99 for the hard cover. Time four books.. is $160.00. Four fucking books. I felt instantly betrayed by the industry, moreover I wanted to leave Barnes & Noble instantly and never come back. I don't go there often and I'll admit it was pleasant, good smelling, nice coffee and snacks abound, but man was I pissed and just forgot all about the great atmosphere and fun loving treats. I said to myself, 'Well, Ill just get a paperback.' Guess what? They don't sell them separately, you have to buy them in a box set or nothing. $49.99 for all four paperbacks. I wanted to kill someone. I found my wife in the kids section with my son, and she could see how mad I was. She, very calmly, explained to me that the prices had gone up, and eBooks had something to do with it. It was something that happened a while ago and I missed it. She told me to wait outside and she would talk to someone to see if she could just get the first book in paperback.

 

     I know I was a little too angry about a small problem that I really knew nothing about. She found a copy of the book that was available at the register for like $13.00 which, if you read the website, know I don't pay $13.00 for anything. I digress. I took the book home and I'm reading it now, and It's pretty good. Gritty, violent and compelling. I just had to vent about the prices of books, and how they suck.

 

     I'll never go back to a conventional book store. I like Amazon.com, the prices are pretty much what you're willing to pay, the only problem is the wait. I like Amazon prime, the service is good and seems as if its a good deal. I'll stick to that. Barnes & Noble, on the Zardoz Rating System (ZRS) you get three Zardoz heads.

 

 



Zardoz Rating System (ZRS)

Warning: Humor.

     Zardoz Rating System (ZRS) works by adhering to a list of strict criteria. Basically I deem something very shitty, so shitty, that it is as bad as watching the movie Zardoz at least one time. Zardoz being the worst movie that was ever made, in this universe and in others. The movie transcends shittiness, and often rips holes in the time/space continuum, to make other things shitty.. and to leave piles of crap floating around the cosmos, inherently making other things crappy in it's wake.. of shit. I will try to give you some facts to help you with the rating system below, to better understand how to use the ZRS.

1) The Zardoz Rating System was deemed by a group of my peers to be very hard to watch. Having Sean Connery, nudity and guns do not make this movie easier to watch in any way. No human or animal should be forced to watch the movie. The soundtrack alone is known to cause blindness and impotence in one out of three men.
2) I have never met anyone who has watched Zardoz more than five times in their life. Obviously the people who edited the movie never watched it more than once, so the rating system can not go higher than five (5) Zardoz Heads, and no less than one (1) head. A rating of five heads is almost unspeakable, and could cause a shit-paradox, causing the end of the world, life and everything.
3) Sean Connery himself has been known to use this system to rate things in his everyday life. Like when has to wait in line for anything, he often has fleeting moments of Zardoz, and often compares life's worst moments to having to suffer through another filming of the flaming horse-shit career endingly bad movie that is Zardoz.
4) When selecting a Zardoz head to use for your rating, use the grainiest, shitty possible quality image possible to express how fucking shitty the movie, and whatever your rating, really is. Examples below.

Jared (my brother) Strikes again.

  

So Jared contacted me on facebook and took a new picture of his Executioner/Mac Bolan collection and shot it to me. I think he just got a few more so this is not entirely accurate, but you get the idea. A few first editions that are actually very valuable are peppered in there for good measure. We got to bullshitting and he had some patches for his leather working company that he said he needed rendered but really had no way to pay me. As a great brother who is awesome and loves to help out, I told him not to worry about it and got down to designing it one afternoon.

 



  
     He was sending me messages when I was working on it insisting that he procure some sort of payment, but I told him all i would take is obscure Zardoz pictures not found on Google Images.

    So.. watch what you ask for I guess.