Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

The First Annual Timothy The Talking Cat Award for Excellence in the field of Excellence

timaward

Sometimes there are simple solutions to complex problems.

Recently I received some initially puzzling tweets from an author I’ve had little interaction with. Richard Paolinelli has been mentioned on this blog on a few occasions but literally only in the context of who was being nominated and/or a finalist for the Dragon Awards – if I’ve mentioned him on any other occasion I can’t find it.

For those who follow File 770, you’ll know the reason is because of a separate feud the guy is having with Mike Glyer (item 10 here http://file770.com/?p=38849 ) but I didn’t get that initially, so it was a bit out of the blue…

richardpaolinelli01

richardpaolinelli02.png

Anyway, at least that three act drama was over, I thought but no.

Today, waiting for me in my notifications was this:

richardpaolinelli03

Here is somebody who has preemptively muted me on Twitter but who clearly wants to interact. But what is it that I can do for him? The clue is in the message.

The book genuinely was a finalist for the Dragon Awards, so kudos to Richard. The claim for a Nebula nomination seems a bit thin but that’s what all the grumpy stuff was about. However, it doesn’t seem to be actually “award winning” as in the usual sense of “award winning” meaning “winning an award”. Now, plenty of really good books never win awards and what matters deep down is whether readers like your book but sometimes…well sometimes the world of SF can be tough and a bit validation can help a soul along.

So lets make the claim TRUE. Tim and I got together and thought long and hard about this and we came up with a solution that:

  1. validates Richard’s claim for his book
  2. inflates Timothy’s ego even further

Yes, ladles and gentleben it is…

First Annual Timothy The Talking Cat Award for Excellence in the field of Excellence!

And the winner is…oh gosh this is so exciting that I can barely open the enevlope!

The winner is….

LA LA LAND!!!!!!

Yay, for Baby Gooseman and Clara Oswald!!! no, wait…hold on… Huge apologies everybody. It seems in my haste I read out the RUNNER UP and not the actual winner.

Let me try that again.

The winner for the First Annual Timothy the Talking Cat Award for Excellence in the field of Excellence goes to:

Escaping Infinity by Richard Paolinelli!!!!

Yay! Well done Richard! A handcrafted Joint Photographic Experts Group Formatted grid of colourful pixels is heading you way for you to keep on your mantelpiece.

camestrosfelapton

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66 responses to “The First Annual Timothy The Talking Cat Award for Excellence in the field of Excellence”

  4. Camestros Felapton: However, it doesn’t seem to be actually “award winning” as in the usual sense of “award winning” meaning “winning an award”.

    He’s probably talking about the “Honorable Mention” or “Official Selection” vanity “awards” he bought, or maybe the 2nd place he got from the East Texas Writer’s Guild in their book cover contest.

    Liked by 2 people

    • JJ: None of which are actual wins, even though he had to buy them.

      I feel a strange sense of accomplishment with this award, since I think it was me who pointed out on twitter that Paolinelli’s was claiming “award-winning” for a book that hadn’t actually won any awards.

      Liked by 4 people

    • @JJ: Holy cow, that awards page is increasingly pathetic. Woo-hoo, he wrote for the Turlock and Merced newspapers. The Turlock paper isn’t even a daily, it’s twice weekly, strictly local news. Residents of California will know both towns as “places you go through on the way to more interesting places” on highway 99, AKA “oh no, the Central Valley but at least it’s better than I-5”.

      I’ve been doing extensive house cleaning and came across the shitload of awards I won in high school. Not bought, I honestly achieved them, and a couple were voted by students. I trashed most of the plaques after we admired them briefly. They were basically a) to make my parents happy b) to get me a scholarship to a good college and as I did get the scholarship and my parents are both dead, who cares? I’ve kept my college awards for video directing; they’re trophies and I worked hard for those as an adult. I could come up with some nominations for my old fanzine work; again, honest nominations, no buying. But I don’t. I wouldn’t mention any of them if I was currently writing. I’d be embarrassed to.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Yes, Paolinelli’s grasping for any sort of award validation he can get, regardless of how tenuous, is really just very sad and desperate, isn’t it?

      He responded to Kate Baker’s tweet about not claiming unearned Nebula accolades by calling her “Mike’s friend” without realizing that he was backtalking to the Executive Director of SFWA, the organization which owns the Nebula Awards. I’d feel sorry for him in all of his patheticness, if he wasn’t such a deliberately malevolent jerk. 🙄

      Liked by 2 people

  6. Say, Camestros,

    Where’s -your- Dragon Award?

    By the way, am I banned yet? Or are you still combing the spam filter for blog post ideas?

    Liked by 1 person

    • Unlike the Hugos, the Dragon Awards don’t have an award for best fanwriter (where Camestros just missed the shortlist this year). And who knows if Timothy won’t get a Dragon Award nomination next year for his magnum opus McEdifice Returns?

      Liked by 1 person

      • Mark, that may be, but stealing an award from someone is not just not nice, its ungodly. Im pretty sure (55-65%) that there is something about stealing in the ten Commandments.

        Along with “You should not covet your neighbors award”

        Liked by 1 person

    • @Phantom

      “Or are you still combing the spam filter for blog post ideas?”

      Well, since you’re oh so kindly continuing to provide them for free, you can hardly blame Camestros for taking you up on your offer. You do know how to stop giving him ideas, don’t you?

      This is all mildly amusing, but Duck Measuring Man is guaranteeing that I will NEVER EVER purchase or read his books.

      Liked by 3 people

  7. I don’t get it. People who care about the Nebula Awards, and thus might buy a Nebula nominee book, know how the awards work and who the official nominees are (and that there are none yet for 2017,) so this claim would make no sense to them and not persuade them to buy. People who don’t care about the Nebula Awards, many of whom haven’t even heard of the awards, won’t care about the claim and be persuaded to buy. So what exactly is the point here? It doesn’t help sell any books and doesn’t generate positive word of mouth or name awareness.

    Then again, I didn’t get the logic behind most of the Sad Puppy campaign. So I’m probably not playing 3-dimensional chess, I gather.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Nah, there’s a third kind of reader, the one who buys lots of cheap self-pubbed books and has to choose which to buy based on what’s in the description (I’m thinking of Tu0mas Vaini0 and his ilk). That sort might well think “oh, this one’s been up for some award” as a way to decide.

      But more, I suspect it’s also a way for him to prop up his fragile ego, I mean look at the vanity awards he’s bragging about. I’m surprised that he doesn’t have “selected for Who’s Who Among American High School Students*” on his list of awards.

      * for you non-Americans, it’s a scam company bastardization of the old British version, which prints big volumes with lists of names of high school students culled from internet scraping and purchased from various sources, sends them letters or e-mails telling them how special they are, and charges them or their proud parents a huge wallet biopsy for the privilege of having a big, “important” book with their name in it, affirming that they are indeed someone who is Very Important. **

      ** Lela Buis actually had this “award” on her vanity Wikipedia entry (still haven’t figured out why some high-up editor hasn’t axed that for not meeting notability requirements), until Filers pointed out that it was a joke of a credential and she removed it.

      Liked by 2 people

      • Funny. He asked me why I asked him about a book -Aha! It must be Glyer, because I send HIM a book and not Camestros, must mean they are the same.
        “Dude, why should Glyer ask about the book, if he knew that you send him one?”
        “Begone Troll!”

        Liked by 1 person

      • “Nah, there’s a third kind of reader, the one who buys lots of cheap self-pubbed books and has to choose which to buy based on what’s in the description (I’m thinking of Tu0mas Vaini0 and his ilk). That sort might well think “oh, this one’s been up for some award” as a way to decide.”

        Ok. So next one, why would Mike have a sock puppet that does cat satire, and make the sock puppet Australian?

        Liked by 2 people

      • @Kat – Because Timothy is a flippin’ genius. You know he’s an LA fat cat living in Hollywood off his Howard the Duck residuals, and he invented both File770/Mike and Camestros, along with, honestly, probably all of us commenting here. I mean, think about it… what’s your opinion about squirrels? I bet you hate them. Everyone – if you think you’re real, consider your opinions about squirrels. If you feel that maybe you hate them more than seems purely rational, you may be a sock puppet of Timothy TT Cat.

        PS. Kat – Your name is, LITERALLY, Kat!

        Liked by 3 people

      • @Contrarius – Have you ever seen Mr. Glyer and/or Mr. Felapton in the same room as your dogs? We may be getting to the center of this issue.

        Liked by 3 people

      • “I mean, think about it… what’s your opinion about squirrels? I bet you hate them. Everyone – if you think you’re real, consider your opinions about squirrels. If you feel that maybe you hate them more than seems purely rational, you may be a sock puppet of Timothy TT Cat.”

        Honestly, this is why I think Timothy is secretly a dog.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Camestros, our first border collie came into our house as a puppy with a grown cat already in residence, and did seem to spend several weeks trying to be a cat.They could never reconcile their differences over the merits of real balls vs. balls of string, though.

        Liked by 1 person

  9. I don’t know where to put this, so I will drop it in here — I have discovered that there is — delightfully — something called the “Tim-adical Writing Collective.” In their lit review they cite author name of Pawson. 🙂

    From the footnote: The term ‘tim-adical’ emerged after an earlier publication (The SIGJ2 Writing Collective, 2012a) in which we problematized the precarity many of us felt as early career academics with the need to challenge and contest the uneven effects of the neoliberalization of the institutions in which we worked. We were later challenged for not being radical but being timid (Canally, 2012). In reply, we argued that yes perhaps our proposed actions were timid, but they were also radical in that they ‘were motivated by a material recognition of the increasingly constrained spaces in which new academics work and the need for solidarity and action, however small’ (The SIGJ2 Writing Collective, 2012b: 4). We have therefore embraced the term tim-adical to reflect this ongoing struggle.
    http://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/vulnerabilities-complicities-and-injustices-%E2%80%98tim-adical%E2%80%99-actions-change-neoliberal

    Liked by 3 people

  11. Oops, sorry, Cam, I forgot that Richard “Poseur” Paolinelli has you blocked:

    The Most Excellent Author: Richard Paolinelli @ScribesShade
    Replying to @Catrambo
    Ah, I didn’t see the original tweet in this chain. To answer your question: I was informed by SFWA members that they nominated Escaping Infinity for last year’s awards. Thus, it was nominated but not a Finalist, as it was for last year’s Dragon Awards.

    The Most Excellent Author: Richard Paolinelli @ScribesShade
    Recently I had grabbed an old ad from back in February or March by mistake & posted it on Twitter. It would have been a one-off and not repeated if your good friends from File 770 hadn’t decided to make a mountain of this molehill. FWIW, I’ve moved on as they have finally shut up

    Like

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