Rick Bayan

Extremely Dark Chocolates (Bayan's Tirades: Volume 1) (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Join the author of "The Cynic's Dictionary" on a morbidly amusing tour of life's bleak underside. Gathered from the original "tirades" on Bayan's vintage Cynic's Sanctuary website, these eloquently witty essays will have you chuckling sympathetically at the ghastly fates that the gods inflict on innocent organisms. (It beats screaming in terror, doesn't it?)

Contents include "On Eating Our Fellow Creatures," "A Living Heck," "The Friendly Face of Evil," "Down with Natural Selection!," "In Heaven There Is No Pez," "A Breath of Used Air," "Thinking like a Cockroach," "When Does the Good Part Begin?" and 30 more meditations on the darker side of life and the lighter side of death.

Despite the bittersweet subject matter, "Extremely Dark Chocolates" is a tonic to read. Bayan's word-magic and cheerful cynicism create an instant bond with readers who yearn for humor with heart, style and substance.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, B, CY, CZ, D, DK, EW, E, FIN, F, GR, H, IRL, I, LT, L, LR, M, NL, PL, P, R, S, SLO, SK ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Rick Bayan
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Oktober 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780991359905
• Artikelnr.: 53711302

Autorenporträt

I was born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I enjoyed an idyllic semi-suburban childhood. I graduated from Rutgers with a degree in history, then picked up a master's in journalism from the University of Illinois. At the latter institution I learned little about reporting but discovered the works of classic American curmudgeon H. L. Mencken.

In my twenties I held a number of typical jobs for an idealistic liberal arts graduate, including assistant editor of Rubber Age and managing editor of Container News. At Time-Life Books I was assigned to write about plumbing fixtures. After 18 months of gainful unemployment (during which I burrowed into dozens of great books and saw my first essays published), I survived seven years as chief copywriter at Barron's Educational Series.

In 1985 I moved from New York to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Why? I had taken a job as advertising copy chief at Day-Timers, the original producer of old-fashioned personal organizers. (People still wrote on paper then.) My work there won six advertising awards. In the evenings I crafted my "disgruntled definitions" for The Cynic's Dictionary (Morrow, 1994) on my office computer.

Two years later I created The Cynic's Sanctuary online to promote my book, but the site took on a life of its own with lively message board conversations, my own monthly "tirades" and other fun features. I also wrote a weekly syndicated column, "Some Cynical Guy," for Upbeat Online. One dedicated fan even wrote a screenplay, I, Cynic, based on my writings.

After 14 years at Day-Timers, I called it quits and leaped into the perilous world of freelance writing and creative consulting. As Richard Bayan (my "serious" professional alter ego), I'm the author of the popular advertising thesaurus Words That Sell and its spawn, More Words That Sell, both published by McGraw-Hill. I've also published three collections of humorous essays on Smashwords: Extremely Dark Chocolates, Lifestyles of the Doomed, and The World Is My Obstacle Course.

In 2007 I created The New Moderate (www.newmoderate.com), a blog for "extreme" centrists. I've been interviewed by CNN, Psychology Today, Australia's leading women's magazine and numerous radio and TV shows.

These days you can find me living with my teenage son and a middle-aged cat in a tree-shaded former stable in Philadelphia. I'm a longtime birdwatcher and one of the few people alive who can do a reasonably ...