I have already instructed everyone in the whole world to read Carlton Mellick III‘s strange and wonderful books. I like them more and more.

The great thing about these books is that although they contain awkward and bizarrely pornographic scenes, surreal settings, strange twisted story lines – although they read like a cult movie with ad-hoc camera or a low-budget TV show – they don’t lose any depth or meaning. The Haunted Vagina surprised me by being so sweet, so hopeful, and so human; Menstruating Mall, while oddly disconnected from it’s epic ending, was still miles away from being just the entertaining story that I expected; and The Egg Man, though it contained the customary amount of Bizarro lewdness, was brain-exercising.

I recently finished Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland and as usual I was not disappointed. The book is exactly what its title promises: Women turning into wolves in a post-apocalyptic Road-Warrior-esque wasteland outside of an isolated, pseudo-communist walled city called McDonaldland where the only food available is food from the McDonalds menu which is slowly turning everyone into multi-limbed mutants. Oh my!

The only criticism I can offer is a very general criticism and it is that I am tired of irredeemably weak and pathetic male protagonists taken away by their own self-centered universes. It is a way of representing human beings that is sadly accurate. But it doesn’t have to be the only way.

For more personal reasons, I am irked by the storyline that goes like this: Man in love with girl. Man crushed/disappointed/hurt by girl. Man finds other girl. Man dislikes/loathes other girl. Man somewhat apathetically enters into a relationship with other girl. Man figures he might as well love other girl. They live happily ever after.

It seems too hopeless, too mature, and too un-explosive.

Woody Allen tells me that this is how relationships and love are really conducted.

But I like explosions.