Some years ago I discovered audio readings by a man with an awesome voice. These were of some of my favorite Robert E. Howard stories. I did about a dozen book reviews of the stories with complimentary asides about the quality of the reader's delivery.

Some months ago this fellow contacted me asking that I take down all articles naming him as a reader. At first he expressed a copyright concern. But that did not wash, especially if he took his videos down as he claimed to. He was reading the works of a hate-thinker, a bad-thinker, a man of the past now vilified for being a man of the past. Maybe his association with Howard threatened him with infamy?

Certainly his name being associated with me, even though he did not know I existed and has expressed no opinion that my evil lungs should be permitted to partake of socially justified air. After informing him that I was ill, in bad health, coughing up blood and goo and barely abbe to attend my writing business and that I would lose at leas a full day of writing just trying to search his articles in the archives, he insisted I delete them all.

I did so.

I even apologized for writing nice things about him, as I could sense that second order tabooing was at work here.

I don't even know what this man hates about me.

What rankles is that he is so ass-kissing, smooch-smooch nice to me, when one can tell by his request that he regards my much as Mister Harker regarded Count Dracula.

I did post an article that I would no longer delete reviews of books by people afeared of my approval. I will not.

Yesterday, the following email was found in my in box, which I include here with my response.

Re: Could you delete a name>

Inbox

[Name deleted at emailer request ]

Oct 15, 2020, 2:50 AM (2 days ago)

Hi James,

I hope you're doing well. I hate to be a bother, but could you delete just my [email received 10/17/20 claiming that "my" name was not "my" name] name from your blog post here:

Thank you so much!

Take care out there!!

Thank you very much for the help James. I did find an article with my name here:

You wouldn't need to delete the whole article but if you could remove my name there, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again for all your help and sorry for the trouble!

Stay safe out there!

[name redacted]

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 8:14 AM James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com> wrote:

my webmaster found 14 articles with your name and archived them. I told him to delete them.

They should be down soon, [name redacted]

Take care.

james

James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com>

Oct 16, 2020, 6:22 PM (17 hours ago)

to [ ]

No.

This is a fan site.

I have no access to the back end.

Sue me.

Meet me in a crowbar duel or any device you prefer for ending my sorry life.

Good night.

I was kind of rude here. But it really rankles that this guy obviously does not read the site and is just searching the web trying to find a bad person saying something good about him to maintain his purity in this Social Justice Age.

I am emailing this back to [name redacted], and would remind him that I did not put his name in the title or subtitle and that I will the next time he wastes my time with his quest for purity. [name redacted] even offered me some private audio recording to listen to when I told him I was sick and my eyes were failing. He seems a nice guy. But I only live to write. I have no other reason to exist. If he demands I spend time on him, than time I will spend, writing, committing low art. Since the fellow seems younger than I, perhaps I could help him out.

[name redacted], I'm an asshole. If Trump demanded I take his name off of articles I wrote about his social significance years ago, I would respond, "No Sir, send the goons."

Well Big [ ]—you do have a big voice—hopefully its not a Rodney James Deo little dog big dog bark—maybe you should send your goons. I rudely suggested a duel in the email.

I guess that is a challenge, so you get choice of weapons if you wish to go for it. I can't use a firearm or bow and arrow as my competence is so low I could endanger bystanders. So if you choose a gun or bow, I'll just stick with my 3-inch pocket knife. But why go to all that trouble?

My phone number is 443 686 0598.

Call me at any time and I'll give you a location where I will meet your executioner squad, whoever they are that you are afraid of ruining your life because I mentioned your name, which you had out there all over you tube, and my old twerp ass will go meet them and get stomped, stabbed or beaten or shot to death and finally my books might start to sell!

Are they Alt-Right Wingknuts you fear?

Antifa-BLM faɡɡots?

Men in Black?

Set them on me and clear your name.

You hold the key to your relief from the burden of my approving mention and my possible fame and posthumous fortune in your grasp—take it.

Send in the goons.

Kill me, for there is nothing to have from a law suit. I make about $500 a month and pay all my taxes—about $450 last year. All I own is hand bag and a back pack. I will leave that in a pirate trove and come out to meet your rogues with my 3-inch cutlass. A big part of me does not want to see spring 2021. I truly hate trying to write through these last winters of filling lungs hacking up blood and puss, my seizing like a ocular vagina. I used to be a man people in the most dangerous city in America feared when they met me alone by night. Now I live as permanent outpatient with no health insurance and no place to call home, hobbling on and off trains like a stoved grandpa [ now look more like the peasant on the cover of the Stairway to Heaven album, than the man I was in my prime] but with no grandkids to bounce on my boney knee. I just want to finish writing a few more books and finally get recalled to Regal, to the Intergalactic Zoological Academy, where I finished 116th in a class of 115 and as punishment got consigned to study you queer apes on this shithole planet...and, well, I digress. I don't have to finish the books. If I get stomped out tonight when I go out in Portland to drink at seedy bars, the fragments of those books might sell better than the version I finish ever could.

[Name redacted], I'm a rancid bag of meat.

I don't care about either one of us.

I only care about my writing and you have interrupted it with your quest for purity.

[Name redacted], Go To Hell.

We can hash it out down there.

I expect to be given a management position and might be able to employ you as an assistant.

Man, you bore me to tears so I had to make fun of our interaction to stop being angry at you for cutting into my time.

Let me be clear.

Reading a 15-second email from you is a grave insult, an imposition on my evil mind that wishes only to repose beneath the waving black lotus and plot dooms from my shadowy abyss.

Please, Sir, leave me alone, or call me and we can schedule my extermination and hopefully solve both of our problems.

Addendum

Last night another email came from the man who I will no longer name.

Why not?

Because he finally told me that his was not the voice reading on his channel, that voice I liked so much, what four or five years hence, the voice that had been attached to his name on that channel and I was too daft to realize was posting someone else's work.

Now that that has finally been said it still does not change the fact that I don't run that other site where the final article remains. I have no object with that nice lady taken out the name if she wishes to.

Now, please, stop asking me to do what I will not, namely edit a post that I did not post on a site where I do not post.

Thank you.