Neal Wilgus: The Leakoids, "Newsalizing The Nation"

Reviewed by Christopher Robin.

Christopher has met Neal. Christopher wrote this review despite his working hard on the latest issue of his zeen. So, give Christopher a gold star! But maybe he could use a sandwich and a nap even more. Some Neal Wilgus books are available on Amazon (if he's the same author), but not this one.

$10. To get a copy, try writing to:
Neal Wilgus, 927 Camino Hermosa Corrales, NM 87048.

Wilgus has been writing and publishing for over thirty years and it shows.

He has fine tuned his literary sense of the absurd, influenced by the Discordian movement, and these stories are more original than what you would find in the satirical Onion Newspaper, though certainly in the same vein. These “spoof” stories (whether they are spoofs or not should be determined by what sort of reality you live in, and there are many, according to Wilgus) are inspired by the subconscious, a deep imagination, a finger on the pulse of Coyote Magic.

You may want to ingest these stories like medicine in dire times, as humor may be the only refuge we have at the end of the world.

My favorites are: Dog Sues for Divorce, (the Kanine Liberation Organization seeks an injunction against mankind on the grounds of mental cruelty and physical incompatibility), IRS Out for Boffo Laughs where the IRS vows to tax people every time they smile, so humor has to go underground (“blackmarket jokesters”) only to be thwarted by the Laffswat team whose mission it to is “to keep bootleg humor under control.”

I also enjoyed: Allegiance Pledge Found to Be Fake, Cuba Arrested for Speeding, Invisible Man Disappears, (“we’re not sure what to make of it,” Lost said, “but somehow all the computer records relating to Inviz have been erased and even the hard-copy files have been misplaced. At this point, we don’t even have a picture of the Invisible Man to give out to police agencies and the general public. Whether or not this is a deliberate act or just a coincidence is not clear at the present time.”)

Wilgus is keeping the spirit of the Church of the Subgenius alive. In the 80’s this sort of devious disinformation would find itself in my mailbox, the ONLY place to find “alternative realities,” or anything subversive, as there was no internet, ONLY mail-order. For those of you who miss Reverend Bob and get tired of all the bad, droll news, treat yourself to some belly laughs in this delightful book.

Neal Wilgus does NOT have a MySpace! Nothing should stand between a surrealist and his mailbox.