If you're an aspiring author, chances are, you've run across Publish America at some point--a company that promises a new way to publish and print your book. The only problem is, they will publish anything--and I mean anything, along the way ruining your budding writing career: to any legitimate publisher, the words "Publish America" are the equivalent of a scarlet letter on your arm.

In a successful attempt to unmask Publish America, several authors pooled their talents to write a truly awful book called Atlanta Nights, then sent it to Publish America under the pseudonym of "Travis Tea." Of course, Publish America agreed to publish it--until they found out they'd been tricked. (Read all about it on Teresa Nielsen Hayden's excellent "Making Light" blog.)

I won't write about it, because Ms. Nielsen Hayden's post explains it better than I ever could. However, I can't resist commenting on how the whole Atlanta Nights project--and indeed, the Publish America scenario in general--reminds me of the "Song Poem" industry so popular from the 50s to the 70s.

If you read comic books during that era, you probably recall seeing ads proclaiming "Song Writers Needed!" and "Your Poem Set to Music!" scattered throughout. The ads were designed to capture the interest of wretched souls who wrote wretched poetry that could be set to wretched music; in turn, the companies who produced the Song Poems (they called them "Song Poems" because they felt their audience was too dumb to understand the word "lyrics") wrote a letter, telling the authors they were sure it was going to be a hit song. For the low, low price of $400 (or whatever), they could get dozens of copies of the songs pressed, and the Song Poem company would promote the song to the music industry.

Of course, this always meant that the Song Poem company simply took the poet's $400 and shipped said poet a box of records that could only be given to friends and family.

Did any of this ever result in a hit record? Of course not. But the Song Poem industry did produce musical gems such as I Like Yellow Things, Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush?, and a host of other songs so awful, they're kind of catchy.

In 1975, in an attempt to prove the Song Poem companies would take anything, John Trubee sent in a poem entitled Blind Man's Penis, with the immortal lyrics (excuse me, song poem words) of:

"The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona's titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind."

Guess what? The Song Poem company produced the song, which became the best-known of all Song Poems. (If you're interested, Bar None Records has released The American Song Poem Anthology, filled with more than a dozen horrid selections that will--I swear--make you laugh while sticking in your mind.)

Atlanta Nights, to my mind, is the Blind Man's Penis of the 21st century.