rural night sky –
“My God…
it’s full of stars.”
Pen to Paper: Banned Books Week 2011
To commemorate Banned Books Week 2011, the present board of the Charlton (MA) Public Library voted to override an earlier board and shelve a particular version of Eve’s Diary by Mark Twain. The seductive line drawings were apparently too much for one library board member to cope with back in 1906. As usual, Twain gets the last laugh.
But the censors are still out in force: since 1982, some 11,000 books have been challenged.
Fiction: Rowboat
Judd glanced up from the ground he was plowing and saw movement on the river. He let go of the horse’s traces and trudged down to the riverbank.
He glared as an empty rowboat glided smoothly down the middle of the river. For a moment, he thought about letting it go on by, but he grudgingly doffed his boots and swam out to catch the boat and guide it onto dry land.
Quotable 70
Science fiction is important because it fights the natural notion that there’s something permanent about things the way they are right now.
– Isaac Asimov
haiku 181
standing at the toilet
fly on my leg
pisses me off
Pen to Paper: We Will Be Replaced, Too
As previously noted, it’s getting harder to find and hold onto a decent job. And awfully few of the alleged job creators – the ones the Republicans say we can’t tax because they need that money to create jobs – are creating jobs.
I had held out hope that those of us who put one word after another to create meaning might be spared the ax. Oh, sure, newspapers have been shedding jobs for almost a decade; I’ve known that since I lost my newspaper job in 2003. Under the right circumstances, though, those jobs could come back.
Or not. Not when advances like this are being made in the field of artificial intelligence. Read it first, then continue here.
Fiction: The Hope Chest
“You have hope chests at this sale, is that correct?” Eloise asked.
“Oh, yes,” the auctioneer’s assistant said. “Right over there. We’ll probably get to them in about twenty minutes.”
“Thank you.” Eloise walked in the direction the man had pointed. She gave each chest only a quick once-over; the one she hoped to find was distinctive.
Eloise tried to tamp down the constant flare of anger she felt toward her late sister’s daughter and that rogue she was married to. After Marnie’s death, Junie – doubtless prodded by Fred – sold her mother’s hope chest at a yard sale. Fred had conned the buyer into thinking the chest was a valuable antique that the family ever so hated to let go, but you knew how it was.
Antique it may have been, but its value was primarily sentimental.
Quotable 69
Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.
– E. B. White
haiku 180
in the street
small wide-eyed cat
sees nothing
OT: Bad Planning, Bad Government, and the TSA
I would like very much to direct your attention to two posts in particular at meteorologist Mike Smith’s blog. Mr. Smith points to various naked emperors with multi-billion-dollar clothing allowances.
There are real concerns about the American way of life that are not being properly addressed while security theater provides no security, makes puppets of the masses, and enriches parasites. I don’t know about you, of course, but this annoys me (in the same sense – and for some of the same reasons – that the villagers were annoyed by Herr Doktor Frankenstein’s little experiment).