Ruination Day or Black Friday, whichever you like

Some of you may recall an exchange between regular commenter Leanright and I in the wake of a post written back near the end of October, the gist of which was that I would in fact read Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, if he paid me to do it.

And then this happened:



"This" being a copy of Going Rogue: An American Life, a six-pack of Stone Ruination IPA, and an envelope containing a personal check for $9.⁰⁰ (our original discussion having called for an $8.⁹⁸ payment, I suppose you could say Leanright just had to put his two cents in, ha-ha).

So, according to our bargain, I will now read Going Rogue: An American Life, as I was bribed to do. I repeat this whole thing about the bribery part of it simply so the Federal Trade Commission doesn't think I'm misrepresenting something, somehow. Because, you know, I wouldn't want the FTC to stumble across my blog and not realize that I was reading Going Rogue: An American Life as some kind of uncompensated thing; actually, I wouldn't want either of my parents to think I was reading Going Rogue: An American Life as part of an uncompensated thing. I received beer:



I took a check:



...for a book which will fit in so nicely with the rest of my bookshelf...



(I swear I think I felt Michael Moore's bloodcurdling screams through my chin when I took that last picture.)

But I kid, I kid about that last part: Going Rogue: An American Life (can you tell I think the title is kind of funny from the way I keep repeating it?--it's like they wanted to make sure nobody at Barnes & Noble would accidentally pick up Going Rogue: An Armenian Comedy by mistake) will fit in very well with my bookshelf, actually. After all, I've already read the sequel:



Rimshot! Fist jab! Oo, yeah! Like wolves from a chopper, baby!

Heh. I kill me. Now, on to a more serious point, which is that I will be making one retroactive alteration to my deal with Leanright, although I don't think he'll mind too much. He insisted I write a review within a week; this I may still do, in a summary fashion, but what I actually mean to do instead is (in my opinion) one better--I will be blogging Going Rogue: An American Life as I read it, with updates at least once a day unless I'm too drunk to type. This may make a "review" a bit redundant, hence the alteration of the devil's bargain. Going Rogue: An American Life entries will have the blog entry "reading rogue," if that helps anyone. I also plan on tweeting the book, if I can manage that, and you can follow me at Twitter (sotsogm); I will also use the hashtag "#readingrogue", which appears to be unclaimed.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we must ask ourselves that immortal literary question wrestled with by such titans as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Raymond Chandler, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams, and Edgar Allan Poe: it's three in the afternoon--is it too early to get potted?