DATE A GIRL WHO READS!!!

I absolutely love this post. I'll just let it speak for itself. ;)



http://madsilence.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/date-a-girl-who-reads-by-rosemarie-urquico/

I'd read the Moby Dick version of Twilight...

Yes.



io9.com/5872490/if-famous-writers-had-written-twilight

Supernatural auction-- ENDS SOON!!

This fan-organized auction was supposed to take place at the Salute to Supernatural convention in Chicago this October, but Creation Entertainment disallowed it. So, it's taking place on this website instead. Here you will find some posters, books, movies, and a CD. Come take a look!

It ends soon, and the prices are pretty good. You do need an account with the site to bid, though.



http://www.webstore.com/80935,user_id,shop

Oh Borders... why am I not surprised?

Typical. Typical. Typical. I really don't have anything else to add. I'm just pissed.



http://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2011/09/06/borders-seeks-six-figure-payments-for-ex-ceo-others/

Care to rename your books?

http://betterbooktitles.com/



Bahaha. This is like that movie ad link that I posted a few months back, where people find more accurate titles for books. Just poke through until you find something you recognize, and then it's pretty funny.

Ze Eenglish grammar eez for ze dummies, yes?

Some consumer reports are very helpful, while others resemble spam. And then, a precious few are entertaining.



http://www.amazon.com/review/RPUSBNNCSTI4B/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0470546646&/

State stereotypes!!

I love these. Stereotypes can be horrible, and people should by no means be judged using them as we're each individuals, but to an extent they're true. I'm a big fan of anything showing off the fifty unique chunks of the US, so I think this video is great. I haven't looked into the book that the guy's promoting at the end, though... hmm, probably should do that.




http://youtu.be/h68UJaHvG_c

Letting a baby pick its gender(s)

Recently, a couple in Canada was criticized for refusing to reveal the sex of their newborn baby, Storm. There have been lots of articles about it, and here is one that I found a couple of weeks ago--



http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-world-canada/20110527/CN.Canada.Genderless.Baby/



I shared this story with a friend, who in return had a similar story for me. Ever heard of Baby X, from the 1970s? This is the story of a couple who raised a little X, who ended up being the most well-adjusted kid in its school. I've found the book on Amazon, and my understanding is that this is an excerpt? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.



http://www.gendercentre.org.au/22article4.htm



Anyway, I find some areas of gender/queer studies absolutely fascinating. I'd love to look more into this issue, but for now, here are these two pieces. I do find myself wondering how much of what we do is based on what we truly feel, versus what society tells us to feel. And what's amazing is that some of this stuff is so deeply engrained into our psyche that we don't even pause to ask why things are the way they are. For instance, look at my post on shooting anvils. I copied the text from the e-mail directly, and as you can see, the sender calls the sport a true "guy thing." Does my wanting to try it out make me a guy?

And do you ever notice how it's okay for girls to be tomboy-ish, but it's not okay for boys to be girly? It's good to be a Daddy's Girl, but bad to be a Mama's Boy? Of course, the article about Baby X was written back when gender roles were more strictly enforced than they are now. Back in the day, all girls took home ec classes, and all boys took woodworking. I daresay that those two sets of classes should be brought back into the school curriculum, but I believe that they should be mandatory for all students.

So yeah. That's enough of my opinion. I just find this all extremely interesting. I do believe that any Baby X, such as Storm, could grow up to be a perfectly happy and healthy individual. If anything is going to eff things up, it's how he/she/it/etc is accepted by our highly categorized society.

Best of luck to you, Storm!

If 1984 came to Thanksgiving...

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM ME, THE BLOGGER:

Since I started this blog, I've been really considering how much politically-based stuff I wanted to post. I get plenty of interesting articles, videos, and editorials about political issues in e-mails and elsewhere. I myself am not very passionate about politics, and I dislike debates. HOWEVER, if I read or see something that sticks with me, I feel the need to pass it on merely as "food for thought." In other words, I do not wish to start any political discussions, nor am I pushing any beliefs that I may or may not have onto you. I'm just sharing. If you don't like what you see, please move on to the next post.

Thank you! :)






With due credit to George Orwell and '1984'/I do not know who wrote this, but it sure resonates!!!



“Winston, come into the dining room, it’s time to eat,” Julia yelled to her husband.

“In a minute, honey, it’s a tie score,” he answered. Actually Winston wasn’t very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its “unseemly violence” and the “bad example it sets for the rest of the world,” Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn’t nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn’t the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another TofuTurkey. Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn’t anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of “Thanksgiving Day” to “A National Day of Atonement” in 2020, to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims’ historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats—which were monitored and controlled by the electric company — be kept at 66 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. “The RHC’s resources are limited,” explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. “Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Ed couldn’t make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines — for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn’t want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston’s brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government - mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids.

Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added “inconvenience” was an “absolute necessity” in order to stay “one step ahead of the terrorists.” Winston’s own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for “unequal scrutiny,” even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. “A living Constitution is extremely flexible,” said the Court’s eldest member, Elena Kagan. “Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example,” she added.

Winston’s thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were “just around the corner,” but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn’t help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to “spur economic growth.” This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life “fair for everyone” realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn’t happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2009, when all the real nonsense began. “Maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today if we’d just said ‘enough is enough’ when we had the chance,” he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

Quotes I

I call this "I" because I'm sure that there will be more. Yeah, you can pretty much find every semi-famour quote ever spoken somewhere on the internet, but I love them and will continue to spread them. You never know when you might find your life-long mantra!




The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'

~Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)



A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

~Edmond de Goncourt (1822 - 1896)



Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

~Anonymous



Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.

~Leo Rosten (1908 - )



This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

~Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)




The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.

~Bill Cosby (1937 - )



Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.

~unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949



When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

~C. P. Snow (1905 - 1980)



I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place.

~Steven Wright (1955 - )



The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.

~Maureen Murphy



Reality continues to ruin my life.

~Bill Watterson (1958 - ), Calvin and Hobbes



Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

~Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3



Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

~Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)



University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

~Henry Kissinger (1923 - )



I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

~Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)



To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

~Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)



Don't you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work.

~Gallagher



The entire economy of the Western world is built on things that cause cancer.

~From the 1985 movie "Bliss"



Communism is like one big phone company.

~Lenny Bruce (1923 - 1966)



Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.

~Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)



Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

~Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869)



Spare no expense to save money on this one.

~Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)



A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.

~Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)



Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.

~E. Joseph Cossman



As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

~Dick Cavett (1936 - )

Unspoken evil in World War Two

This is a trailer for a new book which came out in March. I haven't had the chance to read it, but definitely hope to, as it holds personal value for me. My family is mostly Latvian and part Lithuanian, and I know that my grandparents and great grandparents suffered immensely during WWII and afterward.

As the author, Ruta Sepetys, says, we've all heard about what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people, but many people don't know anything about how many millions Stalin and the Soviets tortured and murdered.

A well-made trailer, and a message from the hearts of those whose stories were untold.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuIy8HqJUvA