American Madness

Each year some Nazi-like parents in the middle of the country feel that some fantastic book is offensive and should be banned from libraries. Pretty much it depends on the community to decide whether to follow through on this parents request and ban the book or to allow freedom of speech to prevail and make all books available to the masses.

Unfortunately there are a number of books that have been banned from public schools and libraries across the country. Last year the book at the top of the list for banning was “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell about a pair of male penguins that raise a baby penguin.

Why do I bring this up now you ask (and I’m glad you did)? Well, this upcoming week, starting tomorrow (sept. 29th) and going through October 6th, is Banned Book Week, sponsored by the American Library Association. The motto for the week is “Free People Read Freely.” Accoridng to the website:

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2007, marks BBW’s 26th anniversary (September 29 through October 6).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

To take part in banned book week all you need to do is pick up a banned or challenged book and read away. Do it in public, don’t be afraid to let people see you reading it, after all, that is the point, isn’t it?

Oh, also related, USA Today reports that the Federal government, after receiving enough pressure has decided to put banned religious books back into prison libraries.

For a list of banned books you can check out the ALA website, the site Banned Books, or just do a quick Google search for them. Or if you are too lazy for any of that you can just pick up Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mocking Bird.or all the Harry Potter books, so, you’ve got some options.

In choosing a picture for this post there were so many good different images to choose from I decided to put a link to the Google Image Search here.

Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09hunger.html?hp

Torture continues. Say what you want about the Khmer Rouge, the Hutu/Tootsie massacres, even the Stalinist purges, at least many of these atrocities were carried out in hot blood. Not so the current U.S. policy for Guantanamo detainees, which reminds me of a line from the movie Payback: “I’ll make this last 3 weeks,” says a mafia boss to a man from whom he is trying to beat information. “I’ll give you a blood transfusion to keep you alive.”

Even as detainees attempt to protest their horrendous, inhumane, sadistic treatment with hunger strikes, as they perhaps attempt to end their lives, our government does not allow that to happen. While not bringing charges against these men, they instead strap them into full body restraint chairs and force feed tubes down their nostrils. Does anyone doubt that this is yet another form of torture?

You know what? If this is what we’ve sunk to, if this is the state of our democracy, maybe we deserve what we get.

…to feel better about the direction of humanity.

Today we learn that:

The Irish are getting along
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27tue3.html

Cruelty against animals may no longer be chic in corporate America
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28burger.html?hp

New York has beaten back the Wal-Mart monolith
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/business/28retail.html?hp

and…

The White House is running scared from what appear to be its own lies
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27tue1.html

I must agree with the initial thesis my colleague Adam, who writes that Google Was Evil, Is Evil, and Will Be Evil. I urge him to stick to his guns, despite a polite reply to Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped, who has challenged the (clearly prevalent) viewpoint that Google has shed its (apparently gilded) “good guy” reputation. Lenssen’s response seems an appeal more to emotion than to reason.

Google has great tools, and yes they started out with no advertising, but Google — a public company in its current incarnation — exists primarily to provide shareholder value via the exploitation of its useful services to drive revenue.

It is not a “good” company if it derives revenue from its services in such a manner that its clients and audience consider it more classy. Eschewing pop-up ads, content-covering ads, or other obnoxious forms of corporate promotion don’t make Google “good,” but merely savvy, as they are clearly focused on the long-term.

But there are ethical limits to a long-term focus. Google appeasers sound like any of a number of ends-justify-the-means historical apologists.

Are Google supporters so callow as to argue that censoring search terms is somehow benign? What if the NYTimes, as a condition of maintaining its print and web presence in China, voluntarily agreed to remove from its coverage and its content any mention of injustice at the hands of the Chinese regime? I certainly hope Times readers would see this is a total abrogation of a newspaper’s mission of informing the public, a mission all the more critical when that information is contrary to the wishes of a ruling elite.

How then is it any less critical for Google to allow all speech to reach those who would use the search portal as a means to access truth? Google has a responsibility just as great as any one newspaper, and in its aggregation of many news sources, as great as all newspapers combined, to allow information to flow freely.

The argument, by Google apologists, appears to be that the Chinese people will benefit so greatly from a legally-obtainable ability to search via Google, even with restrictions in place, that Google should clearly violate its own stated goal to not do evil. This is absurd, and presumes rather haughtily that Google is somehow an essential service and not merely another search offering.

Chinese dissidents will still be able to search for officially restricted information via proxy servers whether or not Google chooses to remain chummy with the Chinese authorities. Competitors like Yahoo and Baidu already provide basic search services. Google isn’t providing potable water, and no matter how much they’d like to think that they are filling some indispensable need they do not offer life-sustaining services, so there is no wisp of an argument for a “greater-good” plea.

What a deal with the Chinese government does allow is for Google to continue its profitable ventures in that country free of official condemnation.

Google, get over yourself. You are marginally more effective than your competitors at search and vastly smarter when it comes to data aggregation and advertising. Your stockholders should feel proud of your determination to increase profits by officially opening your platform to a Chinese audience. Your adherents, such as they are, should stop deluding themselves that your corporate mindset represents any but the most cynical.

So now that the courts have rules that a Pennsylvania school district cannot teach Intelligent Design (a lovely concept that says some “things” were created by a supernatural being), we can now ask the questions that need to be asked.

First of all, is it intelligent design that a sewage pipe runs through our recreational area? What kind of supernatural being would design such a thing? A supernatural engineer who flunked out of MIT?

Plus, why only one mouth? It is very difficult for some people to talk out of both sides of their mouth, and if they had two, hypocrisy would move along that much faster.

Finally, why do some male genitals hook to the left? I haven?t actually seen this phenomenon in action, but some women I know swear that it?s true. They also seem to think this model hits the G-Spot much more efficiently. This is confusing. Does this mean the G-Spot is on the right? Can?t we all compensate by moving a bit to the left? Is this more information than anyone needs to know?

Questions, questions.

I really wanted to pose these and other queries to the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania. But now that the school board’s decision has been termed ?breathtaking inanity? by a federal judge, I?ll just have to ask my priest or rabbi or legalized Nevada hooker. Unless they overturn her, too.

I was in Greensboro, North Carolina when I noticed the man wearing a Waffle House camouflage tee shirt.

I asked, ?Is that from the Waffle House that makes waffles? Or is this a new code word for AK47s.?

The Waffle man laughed, put his gun down, and said, ?yernot from roundhere, ryoo??

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All the hundreds of fans who packed the Philadelphia streets Saturday for an open casting call for extras for the new Rocky movie needed was a picture, a resume and a simple message that would have made the fictional ex-champ proud: “Yo, pick me!” Fifteen years after starring in Rocky V, Sylvester Stallone is reprising his role as the boxing champ from South Philadelphia in the upcoming movie “Rocky Balboa.”

I didn’t know Rocky was getting back into the ring, did you? I thought Rocky V showed an aging, brain-damaged puncher who was headed for an early demise. How can this character perform a comeback?

Does Balboa move around the ring with a cane? A walker? Does he wear Depends?

If he was finished in 1991, how does the 2006 version fight anyone with a pulse? Maybe that’s it: Rocky fights Max Schmelling. With one hand behind his back. No problem, because one good kick and Schmelling’s bones will role off the canvas.

I’d pay to see Rocky kick Max Schmelling’s bones. I’d also pay to see Rocky fight in one of those motorized wheelchairs that run over your toes. That hasn’t happened to you? Just wait.

Rocky was a great series that jumped the shark after Mr. T’s Clubber Lang. I wish they wouldn’t keep these things going on and on forever like they did with Planet of the Apes.

First came the great Charlton Heston movie. Then came the the great sequel where the world blew up. Then the next one where the Apes went back in time….well, that was pretty bad. Then the fourth one where the apes stated a small boutique in Bloomington, Indiana which grew and grew until it was able to take on WalMart…I thought the whole premise was unrealistic. Apes hate Indiana.

I hope Rocky fights Dr. Zais. I’d pay to see that. The could both trip over Max Schmelling’s bones, and then the Ape could throw a bone up in the air like one did in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A great monolith could rise from the center of the ring, and Sylvester Stallone could be shown as a space baby, sucking his thumb.

I’d pay to see that.

I thought that once you publish a book, the next order of business is to propel yourself into the life of the touring author: parties, book signings, adulation and groupies (with teeth, preferably).

What has surprised me about the launch of Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools (St. Martins Press) is the complete lack of sock-em, rock-em excitement. Yes, you conduct interviews, but they are by telephone, which you can do in your underwear while your dog farts next to you (a picture of this very thing is on page 63 of Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools, St. Martins Press).

And yes, you do sign autographs in stores, which the publisher encourages you to do. But unless you are a BIG author, no one shows up to your book signings, and you end up sucking on Cheese Doodles with very bored looking cashiers who want you to stop telling them what?s on page 63 of Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools (St. Martins Press).

So what?s the upside? Well, when you go to your class reunion, you can say ?I?m a writer?, to which the reply might be, ?great, did you bang Cameron Diaz?? Always say yes, except when talking to Cameron Diaz?s father.

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Good news! Now you can help advance the cause of medical science, even after you’re dead!:

A biological anthropology professor at the University of Northern Iowa, Tyler O’Brien, envisions turning some prime pasture in the Midwestern state into a body farm, where human bodies — buried, stuffed in car trunks or exposed to the elements — can provide scholars and criminalists with new benchmark data on human decay.

“This idea has strong scientific value,” O’Brien said. “To answer the question of how long a body has been dead, how long a person has been missing, is critical to criminal investigations.”

O’Brien is seeking a grant of $400,000 to $500,000 from the National Institute of Justice and other organizations to obtain the land and set up the project.

This is big! And it brings up a number of valid concerns:

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Ever eat a lemon?

Picture a series of lemon-eating, funky-lip faces, a wonderful Andy Warhol montage. I would pay $400 Zlotys to see it at New York’s Whitney Museum. I would pay $280 Zlotys to see it at the San Antonio Museum for the Arts. In Burkina Faso you might have to pay me to see it, as there is no direct flight and the rebels have captured all the artists.

I once read that Texas dentists were trying to get children to stop eating lemons. There is a tradition of Southwest lemon eating that goes back generations: cut a hole in a lemon, shove in some dried, salted piece of fruit called “Chinese candy,” and then squeeze the tangy, salty juice all over your tounge and your fringed rodeo shirt and your alligator boots and everything else you?ve got on.

Well it seems lemon eating plays hell with your tooth enamel, and Texans have been urged by their dentists to cease and desist and watch Lemony Snicket movies instead. Which is not to say that Jim Carey is a favorite of Lone Star dentists either, but at least he doesn?t promote tooth decay. They think.

On the other hand, a chat room poster I know named Green Hell reminds us that ?lemons rock, brilliant when your slamming tequila and you just eat one! Gobble…?

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