cover image Mentally Incontinent: That Time I Burned Down a Hooters, That Time My Stalker Crashed on My Couch, and Nine Other Stories from My Weird Life

Mentally Incontinent: That Time I Burned Down a Hooters, That Time My Stalker Crashed on My Couch, and Nine Other Stories from My Weird Life

Joe Peacock. Gotham Books, $15 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-59240-482-7

To determine seven of the 11 stories included in this blog-to-book collection, Atlanta artist and internet presence Peacock asked the fans of his website, mentallyincontinent.com, to vote for their favorites, ""So if you hate one (or all) of them,"" he writes, ""blame the voters."" Readers will likely blame Peacock anyway. Giddily dark throughout, and with a proudly juvenile sensibility, one typical Peacock adventure finds him using a corporate expense account to buy an extravagant full back tattoo-""the largest individual symbol of my newfound sense of daring""-only for the tattoo artist to get hit by a bus, and die, after the first part of a multi-week process. Another finds him setting fire to his best friend's pants, while he's still in them, inside a moving vehicle (his dad's VW Vanagon). Though he moved enough copies of the self-published version to merit this mainstream publication, Peacock's Jackass-style antics fall flat on the page; one gets the feeling that, like many blogger-authors before him, Peacock is his own biggest fan.