A bad day to be a Texan...

Today was not good. It's like all the bad news came out all at once today, and aimed its missiles at Texas.

It actually started last night (but I wasn't fully online last night, so I'm calling it "very early this morning"), when Marcy posted a link to this blog. Go read it -- see it with your own eyes -- then come back.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The Texas State Board of Education has banned -- BANNED -- a children's book. A BOARD BOOK. You know what they call them "board books"? Because they're made out of cardboard, instead of paper. Because the target audience is too young for paper. The necessary motor skills to turn pages have not yet developed in children of that age.

BUT THE BOOK IS MARXIST!!

Bill Martin, Jr. wrote children's books. He wrote BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR, WHAT DO YOU SEE. He died in 2004.

Bill Martin wrote some Marxist book. In 2008.

Obviously, this is an elaborate communist conspiracy to indoctrinate our children, and the Texas State Board of Education is the only entity smart and brave enough to see it and stand up against it.

Need more proof this is "socialist indoctrination"? See for yourself:

Exactly.

Oh, but that's not all of it.

Later on, via Twitter (how I get all my news, for serious) I discovered Props 4 and 5 (scroll to the bottom of page 4): [emphasis mine]

Prop 4: "The use of the word 'God', prayers, and the Ten Commandments should be allowed at public gatherings and public educational institutions, as well as be permitted on government buildings and property."

Prop 5: "The Texas Legislature should enact legislation requiring a sonogram be performed and shown to each mother about to undergo a medically unnecessary, elective abortion."

Need I say more?

I thought this was a free country, with separation of church and state. Isn't that what our Founding Fathers wanted?

I also thought doctors were the ones who should deem what is and is not "medically necessary" or "medically unnecessary." So if I request an elective tonsillectomy, do I have to watch a video of the procedure before the doctor will allow me to go into the OR?

This is just too insulting for words. I can't give it any.

But you know what takes the cake? This.

I can't comment on that last one. I really can't. The only thing that comes to mind is cuss words, and I try not to use those out loud (or typing). I can't believe I live in a state that has such a f*cked up legal system where something like that could even potentially happen.

The first two links are annoying, but, sadly, predictable. And, in the grand scheme of things, mostly harmless (those propositions are NOT going to pass, are they?) But this last one?

It's Banned Books Week! What are you reading?

Did you know it's Banned Books Week? Well, if you didn't now you do. (You're welcome.)

This morning I started Lois Lowry's THE GIVER. This is one of those YA classics that's always been at the bottom of the To-Read list, but for some reason it never drew me to it. The cover was not particularly fascinating (an old man's face), and if I did read the back-cover description it was vague enough that it didn't grab me. But as I was loading up my MP3 player with audio books, I saw this title, and added it to the list.

I have a nice 30-minute commute to work, which is good, but this morning it still wasn't long enough. I didn't want to get out of the car, even though I was already late for work (I had to drop Indy off at the vet again this morning. Yes, AGAIN. That cat will be the death bankruptcy of me).

(WARNING: potential spoilers ahead)

The story takes place in a world where people live in communities and if they do something bad, or get too old, or don't fit in, they are "released." (At first I took that literally, that they were banned from the community and had to fend for themselves out in the probably post-apocalyptic wild, but then the penny dropped and I realized "released" was a euphemism.)

Spouses and children are assigned; one male and one female child per family unit. Regardless of when you are born, you "graduate" to the next age in December, with everyone else born in your same year. The Rules dictate at what age you can learn to ride a bike (when you become "a nine"), and, when you become "a twelve," the Elders decide what your job will be.

One of these jobs is "nurturer." These are the people who take care of the children from birth until that December, when they are assigned to a family. Of course I wondered where the babies came from... Were they all conceived in vitro? Did they have slave women, trapped in a dungeon somewhere, who were constantly artificially inseminated to populate the community?

What made it so hard to get out of the car this morning was that just as I turned into the campus's parking lot, Jonas's little sister Lilly mentions that the baby Father has brought home from his nurturer job (the baby's having trouble sleeping through the night, and he wants to take care of the baby at home overnight to see if that helps -- otherwise the baby will have to be "released") has light eyes, just like Jonas. Jonas only knows one other person, besides this new baby, who has light-colored eyes like him; Lilly says, "Maybe he has your same birth mother."

Aha! So it's not in vitro grown in test tubes, like Brave New World babies were. Who are these birth mothers? Where are they? Do they live in the community, or are they hidden from view, because pregnancy is dirty (the result of Cardinal Sin)?

I have to wait until 5:00 to find out...