People don't learn...

From Chapter 22 of the zen-like ode to incompetence that is James Patterson's online 'virus kidnap crap-o-rama' Airborne:

‘Don’t even think about trying that again, b*tch,’ he hissed in her ear.

‘Someone get the girl!’ Jones ordered from the floor through clenched teeth. ‘Somebody get that machete!’

‘F*ck!’ The biker restraining Lesley threw her behind him roughly and joined the circle closing in on Amanda.

Seriously? Still with the *s? What if I can't crack the code? Batch? Botch? Fick? I don't understand this idiomatic lingo! And what if they throw in a # or a %? I didn't do well in calculus, I can't solve for Y!

This entire exercise is like a slo-mo car crash, with another automobile adding to the pile every day. I have read articles in the Weekly World News that make more sense, and have a better grasp of pacing and characterization.

That said, like the movies of Uwe Boll, I cannot look away, and eagerly await Patterson's sure -to-be-awe-inspiring conclusion.

From the files of the prudish...

From Chapter 6 of James Patterson's mind-numbingly stupid online "chain thriller" Airborne:

Sh*t! Peter went over his plan again.

Yes, you read it right: Sh*t! In an adult novel about kidnapping and mysterious viruses, a character actually thinks to himself, Sh*t!, no doubt pausing afterward to genuflect and repent for daring to think up such a loathsome word.

Can we possibly hope to take any part of a novel seriously when an author is so much of a prude that they won't spell a curse word completely? What, expletive deleted was too subtle?

For the record, the 'novel' is written by 28 winners of an online writing contest. Each 'winner' submits a 750-note chapter, with James Patterson himself (ooh, thrilling!) penning the first and last chapters personally.

We're six chapters in, and it is as fantastically awful as feared, rife with hilarious exposition, howlingly bad inner monologues, and suprisingly enough, spelling errors. But if it might be true that a million monkeys can write for a million years and create a masterpiece, it is definitely true that 29 people can write for a few minutes each and create sh*t.