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?

Day 2: Meet my new BFF, Pinky "eReader" Tescadero!

***Edited to add linky-links!***

My mom-in-law, who is awesomely sweet, surprised me with a pink Sony eReader for Christmas. Because she rocks. I have named my eReader Pinky Tescadero, because pink and Gene Kelly are awesome. [EDIT: I must admit my stupidity here. I was thinking of Pinky Benson, Gene Kelly's character in What A Way To Go. But I like the sound of "Pinky Tescadero" more anyway, so I'm keeping that name. Even if I didn't really watch Happy Days -- they didn't play it in Chile. *shrug*]

I have half a bazillion ebooks on my wishlist, half of which I probably would have bought and downloaded this week if I'd had my laptop with me. Especially after I found out about Books On Board, an independent ebookstore. But I guess that's one of the reasons Freddy was wise and took the laptop with him, so I'd have to run these purchases through him first. He's a sly one, that Freddy...

I'm slowly making my way through bell hooks's FEMINIST THEORY FROM MARGIN TO CENTER, which I started in October for an online book club (yes, I know it's January now, thank you. I said "slowly," didn't I??) Also, Marcy gave me Gail Collins's WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED: THE AMAZING JOURNEY OF AMERICAN WOMEN FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT for Christmas, so I have those two paper books to read (and blog about -- that's part of what makes the reading so slow, all the note-taking...) But fear not, Pinky is already loaded with JANE EYRE (which I need to re-read thanks to Jasper Fforde and his THURSDAY NEXT series) and a few other (free) classics I've been meaning to read for a while.

Every year I want to do one of those reading lists, or set a goal for how many books I want to read in the year, but I wimp out because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make the goal. I'm not going to set a goal this year, but I will keep a list of all the books I read this year. Probably through Goodreads, or something. Maybe through Google Wave, as soon as I figure out how to do that nifty posting-to-Blogger-through-Wave thingie.

(I'm still posting from my phone, so when I can get to a computer, or decide to get up from this chair, I'll add links and other nifty things of the like.)

Meet Violet, and Second Story Press

Apparently, it's Book Week at Criss's blog.

Looknig through my apparently long-forgotten Google Reader subscriptions, I came across this book trailer on Literanista's blog, and I wanted to share it with you because I thought it was cute (and very clever):

The book is published by Second Story Press, which has this to say about itself:

Second Story Press was co-founded in 1988 by Margie Wolfe and three other women dedicated to publishing feminist-inspired books for adults and young readers. We are proud to be marking our 20th year of publishing award-winning books that entertain, educate, and empower.

(The only bad part is they're in Canada, and focus primarily on Canadian authors. Which I totally dig, but leaves me out. *pout* Unless I move there. Which is not necessarily out of the question...)

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...

The Epic #AmazonFAIL of 2009, the aftermath

You'd figure after such a brouhaha, Amazon would be all over damage control, sending out formal apologies, giving out free copies of the de-ranked books, something. Apparently... not so much.

So it was a little glitch. Oops! And Amazon employees were yanked from their family Easter festivities to find the problem, which "didn't take much digging" to figure out. But they couldn't issue any sort of statement, or switch that one little tag from "true" back to "false", until late Monday afternoon? Really?

Have we even received an "official" response to the situation yet? All I've read are these "unofficial comments" from Unnamed Source. I guess this is an "official response." Posted Tuesday morning. If I'd ordered a book Sunday it would have gotten to me faster than that, wouldn't it have? Maybe they should put their shipping department in charge of PR.

Several people are unimpressed with the whole affair, and the explanation. Such as Jane at Dear Author, and Sara at SmartBitches (where Tasha, in the comments, makes a good point: "I would be more likely to believe this was a simple error that resulted in mass de-ranking had there been a mass re-ranking when the error was reversed." I didn't go on Amazon to do any searches myself yesterday or today [don't want to give them more business, still miffed with them], but if what she says is true, the "flipped the wrong switch" story doesn't hold much water, does it?)

Richard Nash has some thought-provoking things to say about the mess.

So does Vroman's Bookstore.

Interesting to note, while the GLBT community was affected the most and was the most vocal about it, their books were not the only ones affected. Which brings us back to Richard Nash's point, doesn't it?

I don't have much to add. Just felt I should update on the situation, and I had lots of linkies to share. I hope they make sense, because my brain is tired and I feel very disconnected from the blogosphere. I haven't had time to read any blogs (that were not tagged #amazonfail), and the six weeks ends Friday and I'll be out Thursday and Friday and I have quizzes to grade and two tests to create and lesson plans for two days to invent and other random grading to catch up on and instead I'm here, writing this. So I hope that explains the discombobulation.

Neil Gaiman on The Colbert Report

Frankly, I'm ashamed to admit I have not read anything by this gent* yet.



Video shamelessly stolen from Inkygirl.

*Gaiman, not Colbert.

First day back at school = fail.

I fully planned to stay at school until 5:00 to finish putting together my semester exams and reviews. Because of the ice and freezing rain, I left at 4:00 (school's out at 3:45). I fully intended to do the work at home, but never got that far.

Nor did I finish typing in the edits to my dissertation. The dumb cat kept getting in my lap, which makes typing very hard. So I read my book instead.

Then I took a nap.

All in all, a pretty worthless evening. Hopefully I can manage to be more productive tomorrow.

PS: thank you to my readers! All... three of you. TRIPLED IN SIZE WITH ONE POST! :P

NON-fiction means it's NOT made up

If you want to write your life's story, then write your life's story. If your life's story is too boring to be written, then don't write your life's story.

This doesn't mean you can't write anything. It means that, when you write whatever it is you write -- which is not you actual life's story -- you have to call it "fiction." Because that's what it is. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

So, some guy made up a heart-warming story about how he and his wife met, so they could win a Valentine's Day contest. Oprah jumped on it (she seems to have a knack for these things - I'm sure you remember the James Frey debacle), and the guy ended up with a book-and-movie-to-follow deal.

He forgot to tell everybody the whole thing was FAKE.

In the article, the guy is quoted saying, "I wanted to bring happiness to people. I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."

Good for you, dude. We all want to "bring happiness to people." (Okay, fine, maybe not all of us. But I'm sure some of you do.) You don't have to LIE to us to do that.

I'm sure your story is very pretty. I'd like to read it. But I'll have much more happiness brought to me if I know what I'm reading - if I read it and then find out it was all a BIG, FAT LIE, then I'm not going to be too "happiness." I'm not going to be full of hope, I'm going to be full of angriness for being lied to and duped. You don't "make good in this world" by deceiving people.

And, dude, when you're caught in your lie? Just admit it, and apologize. Don't try to feed us this "I just wanted to make people happy" crap. Your tale of triumph over adversity stops being inspirational when you lie about the level of adversity you overcame. Your tale of true love conquering all also suffers the same fate when you make up the circumstances your true love allegedly conquered. Nobody's saying you can't write that story -- write it, but don't sell it as a true story just to get it sold.

The lying gets to me. Am I being overly sensitive? What's wrong with calling fiction "fiction"?

And speaking of books making great gifts...

... here's a few to add to my Christmas list: Books for the Word Lover, from Flashlight Worthy*.

I think the word nerd in me needs a few of those titles: Alphabet Juice (Roy Blount, Jr.); Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue(John MrWhorter); The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English (Henry Hitchings); and Verbatim: From the bawdy to the sublime, the best writing on language for the word lovers, grammar mavens, and armchair linguists (Erin McKean).

*Now, I myself never did the hiding-under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight-just-to-sneak-some-extra-reading-time thing, but isn't this the most romantically apropos blog title?

Books make great gifts!

Okay, so you "responsible" people probably are all done with your Christmas shopping already. Because you're overachieving teacher's pets and all. Fine.

Now, for the rest of us... friends, procrastinators, lazy men (uh... and women), lend me your ears (uh... eyes)! Books make great gifts.



Really. books are awesome. It's so great to have them. To touch them, to smell them, to look at them all lined up so pretty on the bookshelf, and to read them. Owning books is fun. It's also expensive, if you're much of a reader. Especially if you're a fast reader, and finish the book in one weekend.

When you think about it, books are the perfect "pamper yourself" gift. It's something you'd like to buy for yourself, but you don't want to spend the money on it because you can just as easily get it from the library (of course, then you have to pay late fees, if you're like me, and forget to ever return the books on time). But owning a book of your very own? It's so much nicer!

They also make great personalized gifts - write a special note on the inside cover. But, please, write legibly, because when I find that book in my grandmother's collection or at some Half-Price Books or other second-hand store, I want to be able to read what you wrote. And please put the date, because that makes the find that much more fun.

If you're looking for some books to give, you can check out Meg Cabot's, Justine Larbalestier's or Moonrat's suggestions (courtesy of my Google Reader subs). If I have time this weekend I'll set up a Shelfari account (I have one under my teacher persona, and thought I was too lazy to make another one for myself as a person but then I decided I wanted to anyway) and you can see all the lovely things I've read that I like. Or the things I want to read, if you're looking to get something for me.

Because, yes, so many of you are - I can tell.

If you are shopping for Harry Potter fans, according to this blog J.K. Rowling is donating all proceeds from The Tales of Beedle the Bard "to an east European children's charity chaired by Rowling, called the Children's High Level Group." So there - the gift that keeps on giving.