Almost a full three weeks ahead of the originally scheduled date, the new Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: The Remarkable… revealed book is now on bookstore shelves everywhere.

I popped in to a Borders Books to see if I could sneak a peek at my own entry in the text, and sure enough, there on the shelf was a stack of at least 15, face-forward, fresh copies of the book.

A quick look revealed that my full-page pictorial complete with full text entry appears in the section entitled Fantastic Feats, and as the editorial staff promised, it’s a great looking layout to accompany a great looking, extremely visual book.

My thanks go to the Ripley’s staff for featuring me this year, and to all of the readers and fans who continue to encourage the work. And a thank you to my good friend Scott for taking the extremely candid and casual photo of me in the bookstore.

Okay, okay, so we all know what this *really* means, but I can’t be the only one who finds this humorous. I suppose all doors are technically automatic, if we’re to interpret this sign literally.

Last year while browsing at my local Borders bookstore, one new release leaped off the shelf and caught my attention: Eat This Book A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit.

The title and design alone are enough to make anyone take notice – what an odd subject – and though I wouldn’t normally consider myself interested in the topic, I nevertheless found myself interested in this book. A later interview with the author by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show further increased my interest in the work.

Little did I know (it only took me a year to get around to reading it!) that the author, Ryan Nerz – a freelance journalist and emcee of competitive eating events – actually cited me in this text! It’s always fun to find references to me and my work by happenstance, but in a book on competitive eating was the last place that I expected to do so!

My good friend Scott spends his days working as a machinist in a large shop (I just recently forced him to watch the Christian Bale flick, too.) - which means that he often has a great deal of idle thinking time and occasionally time to turn those ideas into reality.

This week, he emerged from his day job with a fully completed, loosely Steampunk-styled flower to give to his girlfriend.

Made entirely from industrial refuse that he collected from around the shop - machine inserts, wire bundles and ball bearing doodads - it’s a great little piece of industrial art that measures about a foot in height. Though extremely heavy, due to so many dense metals being used, it’s surprisingly delicate in appearance. I love the added touch of the single thorn, and the portion of the stem from thorn up to flower is designed to sway a bit with vibration or movement, completing the contrast between industrial harshness and organic fragility.