Richard M. Rose

What if you could find the answers to life's most pressing questions in one volume? Well, good luck, this book will not help in the least. It may, however, convince you that the answers aren't so important after all, and you might just as well go relax and have a turkey sandwich. Included between the covers are stories, one-liners, skewed observations, and the lyrics of humorous songs and song parodies. Barely competent recordings of the songs can be heard on the associated website--mybrainsongs.com, and accessed with the password found at the back of the book.. You will also find on the website further and ongoing excursions into the abjectly silly. Rated PG13 by the author, the book knows no boundaries in a flawed but fervent exploration of the world of off-kilter outlooks and strange perspectives, with topics ranging from virility commercials to suicide bombers, from golf to cooking, from pets to pooping. This is the kind of book that may fondly remind the experienced reader of such humor luminaries from the past as Mark Twain and H. Allen Smith (and equally fondly wish that they were still alive). The world may little note nor long remember the quirky humor between these covers, but the laughter should ring in memory's ears for years to come.

Seibal is a major ruin of the southern Maya lowlands, its vast ceremonial center covering several high hills on the banks of the Pasion River in the Guatemalan Department of Peten. In five volumes published over a 15-year period, the archaeological team headed by Gordon R. Willey presents a comprehensive review of their fieldwork from 1964 to 1968 and the results of many years of subsequent data analysis. The volumes also report on explorations in the peripheral settlements outside of the Seibal center and provide a regional view of the evolution of lowland Maya culture from the Middle and Late Preclassic through the Late Classic periods.