Involuntary idleness leaves one with a LOT of time to think.  You know what they say:

“In works of labour, or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.”
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Here’s what’s been on my mind lately…

Now THIS is an alien.

Ancient aliens?  Really?! Puhleez.  And why is that show ALWAYS on television??  It’s always the same discussion and the same pictures and the same theories. Over and over and over again. Hey – get a clue – THE PYRAMIDS ARE JUST REALLY BIG BUILDINGS!

State education systems and school boards. In Texas, or perhaps just our school district, when calculating the ratio of teachers to students, they include in the teacher metric bus drivers and support staff (janitors, cafeteria, office, etc.). HOW is that supposed to be an accurate average measure of how many kids are in actual classrooms and under the supervision of one teacher?? Magically, 25+ kids becomes 17 in all their reported metrics. There are no classes with just 17 except for the special ed classes. FALSE numbers to make everyone look better. Irritates me and makes it nearly impossible to address the problem – it’s HIDDEN from us.

Psychic teens/kids??  Do NOT get me started.  Exploitation much?

Job hunting.  I must be shooting blanks, because I haven’t bagged one yet.

Old movies.  LOVE them.

Autumn. Love the cooler weather, but I’m sick, sick, sick of cleaning the leaves out of the pool.

Cooking.  Love doing it, but if it’s a big, multicourse meal,  I’m so tired afterward, I don’t enjoy the food.

Emily Procter. What is wrong with aging? I mean, can all that Botox, collagen, and Restylane be good for you? Have you seen her lately on CSI: Miami?

My child. She’s growing like a weed. She’s already 5’1″ and she’s only 11 years old. And she’s smart as a whip – already blows me out of the water in math.  She’s the MOST fun kid I’ve met (mom talking here).

Dog hair.  Why the f#$@ is it so bloody difficult to get out of rugs?  Just when I think I’ve vacuumed it all up, I see more! I’ve tried most brands of vacuums, and I keep going back to an old one that sounds like an airplane engine, but sucks great. But danggit – still see more.

Ignorant judges.  I can’t tell you how much it bothers me and how much I think it damages our system when a judge awards money to people because fast food made them fat, or because hot coffee burned them, or because a a band saw cut off their finger.  I mean, c’mon! Let evolution sort it out! Don’t award people for being stupid!  It just perpetuates the problem.

Dumb criminals. I mean, in a certain aspect, I’m glad they’re dumb – it makes them easier to catch.  However, it still makes me shake my head when I see a crook get caught in the car they stole, with the gun they used, and still wearing the clothes with the victim’s blood on it.  D’oh!

What makes you scratch your head?

You ever have a really good time one day, then wake up the next morning and feel like a truck hit you?

Yeah? 

Well, that’s where I was about a year ago.  Had a really great job, making really good money, then, BAM! a truck called “Unemployment” hit me.  When I woke up the next day, I was laid off and my body hurt all over.

I don’t remember much of the next several months.  It’s all a blur of depression, job hunting, and more depression.  I can’t say I am surprised the hunting was unsuccessful – I mean, who doesn’t want a depressed, expensive employee? Gack!

What I do remember is I sat on my sofa, researched Scottish castle ruins (I know, weird, right?), shuttled my kid to and from various kid activities, and moped.

I slowly realized that I’ve had a full-time job since I was 18, with the few exceptions of college semesters and one previous lay-off from a different company.  That’s almost 30 years of working all the time.  Does this look familiar to anyone?

Well crap. Here I am. Unemployed, single, kid to raise.  Now what do I do? I started to get mad, then I moped a bit more, and slowly realized it was time to re-think my life.  Helluva time to have the “what do I want to be when I grow up” conversation with myself, isn’t it?  But I did.

I decided to quit lallygagging around and get my law degree. There.  Decision made.  How do I make it happen, I ask myself.  Slowly, and with patience, I answered.

That done, I moved my daughter out of the three bedroom/two bath house and into a studio apartment over the garage at my mom and dad’s house.  Got rid of all the “excess” bells and whistles (just have the cell phone for telephone, etc.) and put a ton of furniture in storage.  I am now stripped down and ready to take anything on.

So. This is where I am today, over a year later, still looking for work, digging around for school grants and other ways to help pay for this new direction I’m taking.  I’m trying to stay local, so I’ll be able to be a mom in addition to all the rest – but at least I have a plan.  And that’s all I need right now – a way forward.

Where are you in your life? Are you doing what you want to do? Where you want to be? Is life turning out the way you thought it would?  How has the economic climate affected you?

I’ve been incognito of late.  I haven’t talked to you good folks in a while so I crawled out of my hole to have a whine and whinge, and to see how many of you are in the same situation. It’s the start of a new year – a year I know will have a lot of changes for me and my family.  I’m just waiting to see what will be the next shoe dropped… 

The holidays were joyous mayhem – a whirlwind of family, cooking, cleaning, visiting, more cooking, more cleaning, more family.  Just insane fun.  Now January is painfully slow in comparison.  So as I take stock, it  occurs to me that the Grateful Dead had it right in their song “Truckin’” (video provided below for your enjoyment)…

Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it’s been

My life of late has certainly been a long, strange trip.  Despite my perennially creative counting, I’m still getting older.  Of course, this means my daughter and my parents are also getting older.  Relentless aging has introduced so many complications into what was once such a simple life that my mind is regularly boggled.  Not that it takes a lot to boggle this old girl, but, still, consider me boggled.

For example, I have a regular sense of outrage that my body is rebelling.  I used to prize my “cast iron stomach” that is now made of easily dented tin, metaphorically speaking.  And my eyes! Oh my goodness, my eyes.  I’m convinced signs and menus are being made in smaller type than before.

My daughter is a different story.  I made the mistake the other day of watching a video of her when she was a baby.  I could just eat her up.  She was so small, and sweet, and so very pink.  She was like a strawberry confection – red hair, ivory skin, and always, always dressed in pink.

Today? Today she’s a pre-teen who has begun to notice boys and frequently thinks her mom is weird.  She has occasional flashes of her younger self – I cherish those times when she seems like “my little pink girl” again.  She also has regular bouts of some other entity that just makes me want to shake my mom and say “how did you put up with me?!?”  Because, as you could guess and to my horror, my daughter is JUST LIKE ME.  Argh!

Then there’s my parents.  My folks have been married for 50 years.  After college, I left and did my own thing, occasionally living at home, but mostly on my own.  I moved close to home about 8 years ago and have gotten to know my parents.  I have come to realize that they’re not only the people who sired me, but they’re my friends as well.  And they’re aging.

My dad has lived with a significant illness since March 2000.  The doctors told us to prepare to lose him in two to five years, or less.  As you can tell, he’s lasted much longer than that mostly due to the tremendous care of my mom.  She nurses and cares for my dad, oversees his meds, argues with doctors for the best care, and generally holds him together.  She’s become an expert on all aspects of his care.

Now Dad is getting more frail.  He’s not bouncing back from mild illness as he once did. His mind is starting to falter much like his mom did just scant months before she died.

I also noticed the other day how much my mom has aged in the last ten years, and especially in the last month.  This has  taken such a toll on her.  She was once the very pampered wife of a hale and hardy man who did very nearly anything she asked. The overnight adjustment to a diametrically opposed role has been hard on her.  Now that Dad is getting worse, I’m equally worried about Mom.

This all came on the heels of my being laid off last September from a job I’d had for 13 years.  Admittedly it was a job that I had come to hate, but still…  I want to use a less polemic word than “hate” but I really had come to dread each day for so many reasons.

Keep in mind I’ve done nothing but work full time for almost 30 years.  I’ve never been more than a week out of a job in my life.  Not working – not going to work each day – has been very odd.  I have some severance that will last me another few weeks and I really will start seriously looking for a job.  Soon. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to get to know myself.  I’m even going to go back to school.  We’ll see what the future brings.

So all this to say aging sucks.  It has its high spots – watching my daughter grow into a wonderful young woman – and its low spots – watching my parents age.  But as Jim Morrison said, no one here gets out alive.  It’s up to us to make the best of it we can.  I think it was Chuck Swindoll or Lou Holtz who said something to the effect that our attitude in life is 10% what happens and 90% how we react to it.  Words to live by.

So here’s the deal with all this review blog stuff.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided that blogs and other similar opinion websites should disclose when a reviewed item has been supplied by the manufacturer/vendor/seller/etc., or when a manufacturer/vendor/etc. has paid for said review.  A “full disclosure” kind of thing. 

If you want the full story and more opinions on all of this, go to Dear Author.  Jane has done extensive analysis, including actually talking to a guy at the FTC, and has arrived at what seems to be reasonable conclusions about the possible impacts to big and small review sites.

Personally, I don’t think the FTC’s ruling is such a bad thing.  If someone publishes a review, I want to know if it’s an honest opinion or simply blather from a shill.  It allows me to appropriately weigh the opinion and make up my own mind whether that opinion is honest.

We here at TGTBTU (a.k.a. the Pond) blog, review, and comment here because we love to read.  (By the way, we’re Ducks because Sybil – the blog’s owner/maven/priestess – loves dicks er, ducks.)  TGTBTU is our hobby and definitely NOT a money-making venture.  We support the site from our own pockets, defraying some of the cost with what you’ll read below.

On the negative side of our little hobby, not including the cost of the books we read or the postage to send those books back and forth to each other, is the cost of the site and its Internet domains.  Sure we could run the site for free by using a blog host like Blogspot, but have instead elected to upgrade to a specific domain and server space – making us both easier to find and faster to load, which is a good thing.

On the plus side and helping to defray some of the cost, are Associate Programs.  We primarily use Amazon’s because it’s dead simple to create their product URL’s  – those little deelywhoppers inserted in reviews with the product’s thumbnail.  None of these Programs pay much – something like 3% per item purchased using the ID, or about $0.20 for a paperback.   There are other Associate Programs (Harlequin, etc.), but their links are so bloody complicated to craft that we generally don’t bother with them.

In fact, if you like it here at the Pond you can help support us by by adding our Amazon Associates ID, preceded by a slash (/thgothbaanthu-20), to the end of a product’s Amazon hyperlink before moving the item into your shopping cart. It’s not a lot of money, but every little bit helps.

With regard to a provider influencing our reviews, keep in mind that Amazon is not a publisher – they just sell the stuff, good or bad, new or used, in print or out. This means there isn’t an opportunity for an Associates Program provider to influence a reviewer’s opinion before the review is published. The money comes to us AFTER a review is published if the book review uses the ID-containing links, if you click on those links, AND if you put the book in your shopping cart right then and complete the purchase. A lot of ifs.

Also plus side for TGTBTU is that for the last year or so Harlequin provides TGTBTU with coupons for books bought on their site.  Syb will have to say how much it is, but I know it’s not a lot.  The understanding is that we’ll review a few of them every month.  They don’t push specific books – we can buy and review anything we want.  As you can see from our many C and D grades of Harlequin imprint books (even an F here and there), this allowance definitely does not guarantee a positive review of said books.

Again on the plus side is the normal book marketing done by the larger publishers, editors, and authors.  Publisher send a few advance reading copies (ARC’s), and sometimes final published copies, to an author and/or editor, who can then send those ARC’s/finals to reviewers in the hopes that the reviewer will do what reviewers do.  By the way, every year this ARC’ing seems to become more controversial as publishers spend less money on book marketing, pushing more of that responsibility on author’s shoulders.  So who knows how long they’ll do this and how picky they’ll get selecting recipients.

Now let’s consider the other negative side of the review blogging equation – the cost of the books and the postage to send a book to another reviewer.  I read an average of about one book per week.  This can lead to significant costs that are alleviated somewhat by the above mentioned book marketing practices:  roughly one-third of what I read is in the form of ARCs or finals from an editor or author.  From what I can gather, the other Ducks have similar habits to my own.  This means our book habit cost is defrayed somewhat, but not entirely.

Nevertheless, as with most book review sites, you should assume we have received for free all of the books we review.  That isn’t always the case, but considering the size of each of our TBR piles, to try to detail which book was a freebie or which book we bought would be nearly impossible.

Back over to the plus side is that we can, if we wish (most of us don’t), sell the final book copies we buy or receive.  (ARCs are never sold by the Ducks – in fact, since we take ARC responsibility seriously, we spend considerable effort to ensure we always know who has which ARC at any given time.)  If we do sell finals, it’s normally at a used book store like Half-Price Books where we can make a few pennies per book.  Yeah – we’re still not getting rich and we don’t even really cover costs, but it helps.

Here’s what all this plus-ing and minus-ing does: it allows us to nominally afford our hobby, and, if we feel strongly enough, share it in a public forum like this site. Otherwise, with the cost of books rising at an ever increasing rate, our little reading habit er, hobby would cripple our personal budgets and we wouldn’t be able to talk about the books with all of you lovely folks.

So what does this all mean to you, our readers? Not much more than just informing you that none of us are getting rich here.  We don’t sell reviews and don’t sell advertising on the site. We don’t really break even with the cost of the site, but we’re okay with that.

I liken TGTBTU to a very large book club that includes readers from all over the world.  It costs each of us a little to participate.  But it’s worth it because of the enjoyment we derive from sharing our collective hobby with all of you.  It’s definitely a labor of love.

It should come as no surprise to any of you that I am a fan of science-fiction.  I love it in all mediums – books, movies, television, manga, graphic novels, and good ol’ comic books.  It’s all good to me. Love Heinlein, Bradbury, LeGuin, Asimov, Herbert, Zelazny, etc.  And lately, I am finding sci-fi romances to be particularly fun.

But, no. WAIT! I’m a GIRL! That must mean I’m “ruining” sci-fi for all the Spanky and Alfalfas out there.  Let me explain… 

I ran across a post over on Karen Scott’s blog where she picks out the best quotes found on the web that week.  She was sharing a quote from a post written by author John Scalzi.  John was commenting on yet a different post written by an unmitigated jackass about how women (and gays, apparently) were ruining science-fiction.  Still with me here?

I’m not going to link to the original simpleton’s post because they don’t deserve it.  However, you can find it if you do a Google search for asswipes er, “The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky”.  “War”?  Really? Hyperbole much?

Now.  I know and you know that statements like the following are merely misogynistic twaddle and deserve less than our attention.  Nevertheless, I was a bit outraged (like the sun is a bit hot) that this fool could be so misinformed (I’m guessing it’s been a while since his last blowjob):

“As we know, science fiction has inspired boys to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology as grown men.  With women killing science fiction on television, the current generation of boys won’t have this opportunity to be inspired to work in these fields.  There is still a great deal of written science fiction that is real science fiction, so all is not lost.  However, many boys who would have gone on to make scientific discoveries and invent new technologies will not do so since they will never be inspired by science fiction as boys.”

Statements like that imply women aren’t inspired by science-fiction (news to me and my women friends who are engineers), and that women in science-fiction aren’t inspiring to others.  Guess I shouldn’t have read any of that nasty old Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Shelley, or Anne McCaffrey.  Ruined me, apparently.  ::eyes rolling::

By the by, who else thinks this guy still lives in his mom’s basement, eating cheese from a can and drinking Mountain Dew while typing his blog posts in a bathrobe?  I agree with John Scalzi when he says that this jackass needs to…

“… STFU and take his ignorant ass back to his snug little wank hole…”

I’ll close while doing as John has suggested – just point and laugh my ever lovin’ ass off.

If anyone asked Nathan Kamp, ubiquitous (and delicious) cover model, he’d answer: Oh just creating my own web show about cooking, family, and living.  Go here to watch this beautiful man cook up a storm.  You’ll drool for multiple reasons. 

This leads me to ask the rest of you authors, readers, editors, and all other types:  WHATCHA DOIN’?

When you’re not reading/writing/editing/otherwise keeping us addicts supplied in the printed word, what do you do with yourself?

Do you, like Nathan, love to cook?  I do.  Give me a tea towel over my shoulder, a good knife, and some groceries and I’ll give you a meal you will not forget.  I LOVE to cook.

What about you?  How many of you knit?  I’ve always wanted to learn to do that.

Do you love to travel?

Meditate?

Practice yoga?

Run? Jog? Walk? Practice standing still?

Garden? Paint? Photography?

How many of you volunteer?

Who out there loves pilates, Socrates, or golf tees?

Tell us about the you that is outside of words, paper, and makebelieve worlds! What did they use to say at the beginning of the old show “Naked City” – There’s a million stories in the naked city…  We want to know more about yours!

And, just because I think this is the sexiest Nathan Kamp cover I’ve ever seen…

I stumbled on this link via a twitter by The Girl With a One-track Mind.  It’s an amazing article on erotica covers that made me go “Hmmmm…”

I would like to see more beefcake on my hetero erotica covers, now that I think about it (notwithstanding the craptastic Ellora’s Cave covers).  It would be nice to see something similar to what you see below, but of a wonderfully detailed male torso.

What do you people think?  Pretty interesting, isn’t it.

And Sybil wonders why I like my paper books.  This kind of puts things in perspective…

Some people are just too creative for their own good.

Seriously.  “Overly” creative people seem to be driven mad by their creative genius.  Just look at Van Gogh and Basquiat.

What is it that makes a sculptor, author, actor, etc., go insane? (And for the purposes of this Pondering, I’m lumping all creative types under the heading “artist” – not just painters.)

Personally, I think it’s all the ideas bursting to life in their minds.  It must be difficult sometimes to tell where the ideas end and real life begins.  A bit like trying to see what is going on around you through a foggy lens.  I think we all have brief moments of creative genius – in our dreams, or right when we wake up in the morning, always when our brains are at their most receptive.  Just imagine – the real creative geniuses out there live these moments 24×7 and the rest of us have to really work at it.

I think the challenge for the truly creative is to translate those ideas to reality – get them out of your head.  It’s a bit like bleeding excess air out of a tire or a soccer ball.  The tire or ball is no good if it’s overinflated.  At what level, then, is perfect “inflation”?  Does an artist leave some ideas in their head, not on paper/film/canvas, just percolating until they bubble forth and can’t be denied any longer?  What if more than one comes forward at the same time?

How frustrating is it if an idea doesn’t translate the way an artist “sees” it?  How many times can an artist go back and “tweak” something before they just have to walk away?

What is creativity to all of you?  What do you think is your personal area of creative genius – because, after all, we all have it, don’t we?

For more creative genius, have a look at the Duck Sauce Theater in the lower left corner of TGTBTU’s home page.  Post-It’s as a medium – who knew…

As you know by now, we’re hosting a TGTBTU TBR Pile Beauty Contest.

All you have to do to win is take a photo of your TBR pile – in costume, in drag, or just in disarray – and email it to redwyne @ gmail . com (minus the spaces).  The ducks will pick finalists and post them to the site next week.  These entries will be voted on by readers to see who gets the following prizes! 

Grand Prize Winner gets one (1) copy of ALL of the following books (thanks to Sandy and her San Francisco trip)…

• Oceans Apart by Karen Kingsbury
• Naughty by Nature by Barbara Pierce
• Autographed copy of Dark Needs at Night’s Edge by Kresley Cole
• Night Keepers by Jessica Andersen
• The Undead Next Door by Kerrelyn Sparks
• Skinny Dipping by Connie Brockway

Second Place Winner gets…

• Selection of three (3) ARCs from Gwen’s stash (will require a phone call or IM conversation with Gwen where we paw thru the boxes together – almost 100 to chose from).

Third Place Winner gets…

• Selection of one (1) ARC from Gwen’s stash (phone call or IM conversation with Gwen, etc.).

Honorable Mentions & Special Category Winners get…

• Each winner gets a selection of one (1) of these Signed Bookmarks:
  - Sharon Page
  - Sylvia Day
  - Jaci Burton
  - Heather Waters
  - Elizabeth Hoyt

Not bad, huh?

Welcome to…

TGTBTU’S FIRST (and probably last) ANNUAL

TBR PILE

BEAUTY CONTEST  !! 

Never let it be said that we ducks here at TGTBTU can’t laugh at everyone else ourselves.  By now, everyone has seen Sandy’s TBR pile.  Thinking of her pile, and my own, I started to wonder how many TBR piles are out there and what do they look like?

And since we nearly always have books and shit stuff to give away, I figured why not combine efforts and host a To Be Read Pile BEAUTY PAGEANT!  Eh…  Why not – at least it will keep Sybil off the streets for a while.  You know that little hooker is just looking for an excuse to get back out there. 

So, here’s how it will work:

1. Take a photo of your TBR pile, box, shelf, room, mountain range, and send it to redwyne @ gmail . com (minus the spaces, of course), with “TBR Contest” in the header, please.  Do this by 11pm Central next Wednesday, 10 September.  We’ll do the judging next week.

2. The ducks will pick the top three submissions and will post these on the site.

3. Then, the readers get to vote which pile is prettiest.  The winner and two runners up all get wonderful prizes, of course (books, books, and more books).  Exact prizes To Be Determined, of course – once we’ve all dug around and pulled out some primo stuff out of our respective piles.

4.  We’ll also award prizes for Honorable Mentions in categories like “Messiest,” “Biggest Fangirl/boy” (nothing but La Nora in your pile?), “Biggest Paranormal Pile,” “Made Us Laugh Hardest,” “Most Creative Costume,” “Most Congenial,” etc.

I’ll post again this weekend with the prizes. So get your cameras ready, put the tiara on the pile, maybe a boa or two, hey – even a bikini, and start snapping away!  Some free shit stuff is only a click or two away!

Here’s a few snaps to get some ideas going…

	I think this is Wendy The Super Librarian’s TBR pile.  Look, it’s in alphabetical order by author then title!Is that a card catalog in the background?
	After filling her storage room, Sandy has had to outsource her TBR.
	I hear this very phallic TBR pile belongs to Limecello.  I TOLD Sybil that girl would be trouble.
	The high degree of Sci-Fi and Fantasy in this pile tells me it might be Shannon C’s.
	And rumor has it, dear friends, this is Sybil’s guest bedroom.  You can just make out Lawson coming up for air in the back left corner, I think.

Have fun everyone!

Go back and look on the main TGTBTU page, in the lower left corner at Duck Sauce Theater.  You’ll see a short interview with “Usain Bolt” – the Fastest Man on Earth.

I swear – it’s real!  No really!

Just in case you are wondering, Gwen broke the sidebar.

We are working on fixing it.

Sorry about that….

My kind of guys, s’all I’m sayin’.  Listen to the NPR Morning Edition short blurb here.

—

Vandals in Hot Water for ‘Fixing’ Typo on Historic Grand Canyon Sign

Saturday , August 23, 2008

PHOENIX -
When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense.

Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty Aug. 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park’s Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks.

Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs. They were interviewed by NPR and the Chicago Tribune, which called them “a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation.”

—

LOVE it!

I recently read this blog post about a reader/writer who has fallen in love with their Kindle. It’s making me rethink my thunk on Kindle: No way – don’t like a book retailer dictating a reader to me; feels too oligarchical to my silly American feelings; and Amazon “cheats” by releasing books on Kindle three days before print release dates.  I just felt skeeved out by all of it.  And then I read posts like that.  Now I don’t know WHAT to do and need some feedback from you folks… 

I used to read eBooks on my Palm device, but the screen is too small and the battery too short-lived for it to be a long-term ereader.  So I invested the relatively small amount of change in a eBookwise.  I like the eBookwise – long battery life, nice screen, but it’s a gigantic hassle to load books on it that aren’t exactly the correct file format.  And if the line breaks in a book are hosed?  Fageddaboutit.  Just too nasty to read.

I lust after the Sony Reader, but even I can’t justify the kaching kaching kaching (that’s three kachings, if you’re counting).  That sucker costs some serious money.  Ouch!

So.  Kindle?  Anyone have it?  Do you like it?  How easy/hard is it to load books?  Is it light enough to hold for long periods?  It seems to me the color of the device would be off-putting – I mean, white?  For a HANDHELD?  Ick.  I keep my hands clean, and even *I* can make something look like poo after a few months of use.  There’s a reason why handheld devices are black or dark gray.

What do you folks think?  Should I do it or just wait a while?

Here’s a link to a quick television interview of Angela Knight, author of Warrior (reviewed here – terrific book, by the way). It’s complete coolness to see authors in real life and to hear their take on things.

I found this on Nalini Singh’s blog. Another wonderful person.

Just wanted to share.  Carry on…

This just in…

Lilith Saintcrow, Marjorie Liu, C.E. Murphy, and other urban fantasy/paranormal romance writers will be at the San Diego ComiCon tomorrow. Here’s who is going to be at an absolutely stupendous panel:

“…Lilith Saintcrow will be at Comicon in San Diego! She’ll be on the “Looking at Our World: Eye on the Present” panel along with Kelley Armstrong, L. A. Banks, Kate Brallier, Marjorie M. Liu, C. E. Murphy, Justine Musk, and moderator Samantha Sommersby ( Room 3). That’s a veritable who’s who of urban fantasy stars, so if you’re a fan this is a can’t miss event.”

Here’s the blurb from the ComiCon program:

Friday, July 25th, 1:00-2:00 Looking at Our World: Eye on the Present— Authors discuss how they use the supernatural in stories of contemporary society. Panelists include Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld), L. A. Banks (The Vampire Huntress Legend Series), Kate Brallier (The Boundless Deep), Marjorie M. Liu (The Iron Hunt), C. E. Murphy (The Negotiator Trilogy), Justine Musk (Lord of Bones), Lilith Saintcrow (The Dante Valentine Series), and moderator Samantha Sommersby (Forbidden: The Revolution). Room 3
Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy | Writers & Writing

Read on for more news from Saintcrow’s newsletter (thanks for letting us repeat this, Lilith). Now to find my “I (heart) Japhrimel” t-shirt…

ComiCon!
You read that right, dear Reader: I am going to be at the San Diego ComiCon next week! I’ll be doing a panel on Friday and also signing at the Mysterious Galaxy booth. Then I’ll be wandering around and causing trouble.

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Although I don’t know how much trouble I can get into…oh, wait. It’s me we’re talking about. I’ll be lucky to engage in a margarita-fueled ramble about publishing. I’m so boring.

New Website!
Come on over to the new website and see the awesomeness! The forum still has a few hiccups and burps, but we’re getting that ironed out too. It’s been a long wait, but I think the new site’s worth it.

Serafim
At ComiCon, I’m going to have a few copies of Serafim, Issues 1 & 2. While most of them are for marketing purposes (hey, I’ve got to keep Josh alive and eating long enough to finish both Serafim, and Steelflower, and a couple other projects), if you show up dressed like a character from one of my books OR wearing an I (Heart) Japhrimel T-shirt, you just might score a free signed comic book. How awesome is that?

Strange Angels
I’m pleased and proud to announce that I’ve sold a YA trilogy, Strange Angels, to Penguin/Razorbill. (Actually, it was my agent who sold it, if we’re being honest.) It means a lot of work this summer, but I’m thrilled to the gills to be working on something so awesome.

I’m also writing the fourth installment in the Jill Kismet series. Book 2, Hunter’s Prayer, will be out on September 1.Like I said, it’s going to be a busy summer. Stay cool out there, dear Readers!

Next stop, ComiCon!

T-Shirts
Speaking of T-shirts…there’s new I (Heart) Japhrimel T-shirts, and Oh, Sekhmet sa’es! shirts, now available through CafePress. The UnSullen One is even now working on some more hush-hush supercool designs, so further bulletins as events warrant.

Consider yourself flashed…

Total Coolness!  The Acheron trailer is out and it’s way cool.  Click on the more link to see it…

GAH! I CAN’T WAIT! AUGUST 5TH!!! 736 PAGES  OF Dark-Hunter GOODNESS!  Sorry, Sybil.  But SQUEEE!!!  14 Days and counting!

The most anticipated story in the blockbuster Dark-Hunter series. The never-before-revealed story of the Dark-Hunter leader, Acheron. He was made human in order to escape death, but in death he was reborn a god. . .Eleven thousand years ago a god was born. Cursed into the body of a human, Acheron spent a lifetime of shame. However, his human death unleashed an unspeakable horror that almost destroyed the earth. Then, brought back against his will, Acheron became the sole defender of mankind.

Only it was never that simple. For centuries, he has fought for our survival and hidden a past he’ll do anything to keep concealed. Until a lone woman who refuses to be intimidated by him threatens his very existence.

Now his survival, and ours, hinges on hers and old enemies reawaken and unite to kill them both.

War has never been more deadly… or more fun.

I heard about this over on the Daily Coyote’s Twitter and it couldn’t have come at a better time for me personally. I was grinning so big throughout it, my cheeks hurt. I DARE you to not smile when you watch this!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I’m going to do something I almost never do around here – make a political statement or two or ten. The views expressed here are only mine. I imagine Sybil will be one of the first to say, “WHAT? Are you on CRACK?” when she read this. 

It will come as no surprise that I am a Conservative. I have Liberal leanings when it comes to women’s rights (believe in choice) and gun laws (member of Million Mom March), but I am a staunch conservative when it comes to the environment and all the horse-hockey we’re fed by much of the media and left-wing politicians these days.

Not only that, but I think Al Gore is a grand-standing, self-serving, venal idiot who does not deserve the Nobel Prize. I think he and the “scientists” he employed to make the fallacy-laden farce of a global warming movie should be ridden out of town on a rail after being tarred and feathered. To use Dennis Miller’s name, all the “Global Warmons” can kiss my ass. Why? BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAN’S IMPACT ON GLOBAL WARMING (anthropogenic, if you want to technical term).

What is the take-away from all this? The liberal media and politicos will continue to use Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (a.k.a. FUD) to score emotion points against the current presidency BECAUSE IT WORKS. Folks are fearful about global warming, aren’t they? They’re uncertain about their future, aren’t they? Many doubt America’s current political structure, don’t they?

I encourage everyone to read BOTH SIDES of the argument and to not be railroaded into listening to only the one side of this discussion. Today’s media will make it sound like the sky is falling every time they talk about this just to keep your eyes on their channel/paper/magazine/website. Why? Because it works and advertising dollars follow the eyes. The 24-hour news cycle has done more to cause FUD than anything else. These media outlets have no interest in saying, “Oh well, actually, everything’s okay,” because then why would you listen to them? If you’re scared about what they’re going to tell you next, you’ll keep your eyes glued, won’t you?

Why do I think this? Read on. Several of these bullets were gathered from National Geographic’s recent series “Earth: A Biography, Episode: Ice”…

~ For 90% of its existence, the planet has been warmer than it is today. We’re at the tail-end of the last ice age – that’s why the planet is warming, not because of manmade (anthropogenic) reasons.

~ The ocean levels will rise no matter what we do, regardless what presidential candidates say they can do about it, because the glaciers are melting due to the natural planetary warming cycle.

~ The Earth has been in another of its warming cycles for the last 1,000 or so years. We’ve only had extensive use of fossil fuels for the last 100. It is supreme arrogance to think that modern man’s puny speck of time has anything to do with such a huge, natural shift, or that there is anything we can do to stop it.

~ The glacial melting accelerates as time goes on because of melt water “lubricating” the bottom of a glacier toward open (read, lower and warmer) ground, or open water thus increasing iceberg calving. This acceleration is a natural even what at the end of an ice age.

~ Today’s glacial melting is uncovering evidence of earlier settlements, indicating that this melt/growth cycle is common and has occurred several times in man’s time on the planet.

~ Over the next 300-500 years (not 5, not 50, not 100 years), rising sea levels due to ice melt will cause significant portions of tidal or coastal human habitation to be forced to move inland. This melt is unavoidable due to the end of the current ice age, not because we’ve driven cars for the last 100 years. There will be more than enough time to relocate communities before it occurs – the raise of sea levels won’t happen overnight.

~ If ALL of the land ice melted today, the global average sea level would rise about 266 feet, with the Antarctic ice sheet contributing about 240 feet and the Greenland ice sheet contributing about 25 feet. An unlikely event even with the current trends.

If even the experts cannot agree that the planet is warming, how is it politicians can be certain? Thermometers vary on the tale of the tape, from the Earth’s temperature lowering a full degree since 1881, to increasing a full degree since then. Interestingly, recent studies have discovered this variance is primarily due to skewing the data on a chart by 6%, not actually changing temperatures – literally twisting the chart a bit. This is more than a little borderline dishonesty to get the results desired for the political gain.

Don’t believe me? Please read the below, from The Register in the UK:

What could be the motivation for the recent changes [in how the data was reported and represented on graphs that have been used to justify the global warming argument]?Further examination of the NASA site might give us a clue as to what is happening.

NASA staff have done some recent bookkeeping and refined the data from 1930-1999. The issues has been discussed extensively at science blog Climate Audit. So what is the probability of this effort consistently increasing recent temperatures and decreasing older temperatures? From a statistical viewpoint, data recalculation should cause each year to have a 50/50 probability of going either up or down – thus the odds of all 70 adjusted years working in concert to increase the slope of the graph (as seen in the combined version) are an astronomical 2 raised to the power of 70. That is one-thousand-billion-billion to one. This isn’t an exact representation of the odds because for some of the years (less than 15) the revisions went against the trend – but even a 55/15 split is about as likely as a room full of chimpanzees eventually typing Hamlet. That would be equivalent to flipping a penny 70 times and having it come up heads 55 times. It will never happen – one trillion to one odds (2 raised to the power 40.)

(Authors note: Several readers have astutely pointed out that the probability calculation is incorrect. A proper statistical calculation of coin toss probabilities shows greater than four sigma deviation – which places the odds of a random 55/15 distribution at closer to “one out a million,” rather than “one out of a trillion” as originally reported.)

Particularly troubling are the years from 1986-1998. In the 2007 version of the graph, the 1986 data was adjusted upwards by 0.4 degrees relative to the 1999 graph. In fact, every year except one from 1986-1998 was adjusted upwards, by an average of 0.2 degrees. If someone wanted to present a case for a lot of recent warming, adjusting data upwards would be an excellent way to do it.

Looking at the NASA website, we can see that the person in charge of the temperature data is the eminent Dr. James Hansen – Al Gore’s science advisor and the world’s leading long-term advocate of global warming.

Data Sources

NASA and Had-Crut data are largely based on surface measurements, using thermometers. They both face a lot of difficulties due to contaminated data caused by urban heating effects, disproportionate concentration of thermometers in urban areas, changes in thermometer types over time, changes in station locations, loss of stations, changes in the time of day when thermometers are read, and yet more factors.

NASA has a very small number of long-term stations in the Arctic, and even fewer in Africa and South America. The data has been systematically adjusted upwards in recent years – as can be seen in this graph, reproduced below. Temperatures from the years 1990 to present have more than one-half degree Fahrenheit artificially added on to them – which may account for most of the upwards trend in the NASA temperature set.

I just felt I had to say something on all this. It’s been stewing in my gut for a long while. Sure, I’m doing my responsible part by recycling what my community recycles, driving less, striving to lower my carbon footprint. However, I am doing it because of land-fill causes (I’d like a cleaner planet) and fuel costs. Not because I think it will amount to a hill of beans on the “global warming” joke.

Sources:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2238317.0.Doubt_is_cast_over_global_warming.php

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2964

http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/al_gore_global_warming/2008/05/19/97307.html

I canNOT believe the things I find on the Internet.

Gracious. It’s amazing what people will post. Including us, I suppose.

For example, this guy’s Twitter feed is one of the funniest, most profound ones around. Lookie here:

More like a moonless winter night on Cannery Row than a fresh spring day. Thanks for nothing, Massengill. 11:17 AM June 09, 2008 from web

Oh shit. That is still making me giggle! It’s both gross and supremely descriptive. Twitter is the modern day haiku, I think.

What about you? Do you have a favorite Twitterer? Other than Sybil, of course. Do share…

I’m a single mom with a full-time job and an almost full-time hobby playing with Sybil and the rest of the ducks on this site.  I’m lucky if I can string together one whole hour of my own with no interruptions.  What this means is I’m VERY picky about where I spend my personal time.  V-E-R-Y picky. 

Most of the time that hour is spent either reading or watching a television show I really like (and always multitasking something I can do while sitting for a bit – folding laundry, filing my nails, etc.).  That is, it WAS spent watching television until I heard most of my favorite shows are being canceled.  It looks like I’ll be doing a LOT more reading from now on.  And the yoga mat in the corner is eyeing me again…

Mind you, I’m not naïve.  I know that television is all about ratings and advertising dollars.  I know that Madison Avenue (purported center of advertising in the United States, if not the world) caters to the segment of our population who has the most available pocket change to spend on the tripe garbage stuff they sell in those ads.  Makes sense, right?  Well, it would except that they think 18-35 year old males are that demographic - the one with the most available “free” money.

What does that mean to you and me?  They couldn’t give a rats ass about what women like to watch.  The only reason there are shows on television for women is if those shows are also something men in the target demographic will also watch, either because they like them or because they want to get in the pants of the women who like them.

Case in point…

Canceled and it PISSES ME OFF

• Battlestar Galactica (SCI)
  Ended after four seasons.  I loved this show, but maybe I could see how it was getting a little tired.  They didn’t keep the writing fresh and it’s going down a bit of a weird path with all the religious overtones this season.  But damn, this is an INTERESTING season and I’m going to be sorry to see this gritty, compelling show go.
• Blood Ties (LIF)
  Ended after one season.  The hero was too effeminate for me, but I liked the premise and the fact it’s based on some good books.  Problem is they moved the bloody thing around so much, forcing long breaks between episodes – all this after it got hidden on Lifetime to begin with - that I could never find it.  So I stopped looking.
• Drawn Together (COM)
  Ended after three seasons.   Okay.  I know this doesn’t fit my argument, but it cracked my shit up whenever I watched it, so I had to include it in the “damn I’m disappointed… AGAIN” category.
• Extras (HBO)
  Ended after two seasons.  I loved this show.  It was wry and painfully funny.  But not “Guy TV.”
• Men In Trees (ABC)
  Ended after two seasons.  Dammit!  Anne Heche might be a couple of FruitLoops short of a full bowl, but I loved this show!  I want to have James Tupper’s babies!  I thought the groom getting hit by lightning was hilarious!  I want to jump the bones of the Kidney Guy (Scott Elrod or ”Cash”) so bad my teeth hurt!  I loved watching the online streamed (I think they call it “torrents”) episodes.  But it’s not “Guy TV.”
• Moonlight (CBS)
  Ended after one season.  The hero was anemic (heh) and the writing sucked (double heh), but it was fun to watch for the kitschy quality.  But, say it with me, not “Guy TV.”
• New Amsterdam (FOX)
  Ended after one season. CRAP!  I LOVED this show!  The hero is a hunk and a half and the story is downright GOOD.  A man cursed to be immortal until he finds his one true love, then when he does he loses her and can’t find her again, so he searches and searches?  C’mon!  What’s not to like??!!  But it’s “Chick TV” and we apparently don’t have the loose change to waste spend on all the tampons, paper towels, and diapers they’re selling us (yes, that was sarcasm).

WTF are they THINKING?!

Here’s a short list of the shows they have kept, or are starting, that baffle the absolute shit out of me.  At least, baffled until I remembered the demographic rule (18-35 yo males):

• Boston Legal (ABC), Chuck (NBC), and My Name is Earl (NBC)
  Shows that bore me and I can’t figure out the allure.
• Wife Swap (ABC) & Supernanny (ABC)
  I imagine reality shows are difficult to cancel – they’re cheap to produce and there’s a compelling “train wreck” quality to them,  But I still hate these two and they’re KEEPING them.  They must they pick the weirdest families in the US to swap women and who here doesn’t want to just spank the kids, and then spank the parents!
• According to Jim (ABC) (I KNOW! still on the schedule!), Three and a Half Men (CBS), How I Met Your Mother (CBS), or Big Bang Theory (CBS).
  Any 30-minute comedy show that isn’t Scrubs.  They make me yawn.
• Knight Rider (NBC)
  Makes me just roll my eyes and say, “Boys and their toys.”
• Ghost Whisperer (CBS) and Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
  Don’t take my Chick Club card away for hating these two.  I think they’re keeping GW for Hewitt’s tits.  I haven’t a clue what the hell is keeping the sentimental tripe that is Bros & Sis’s on the schedule.
• NUMB3RS (CBS), Cold Case (CBS), and Without A Trace (CBS)
  Cop shows that are lingering long after they’ve jumped my shark.

Couldn’t end soon enough for me

• Bionic Woman (NBC)
  Ended after one season.  Crappy heroine, but cool show.
• Cane (CBS)
  Ended after one season.  Boring.
• Viva Laughlin (CBS)
  Ended after two episodes.  Silly.
• Journeyman (NBC)
  Ended after thirteen episodes.  Crappy hero, interesting premise.
• Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann (ABC)
  Ended after one season.  WTF?  Can you say “stretched beyond all proportion”?
• The Dead Zone (USA)
  Ended after six seasons.  Yawn.
• Cashmere Mafia (ABC)
  Ended after one season.  Silly and pretentious.
• Cavemen (ABC)
  Ended after six episodes.  You really have to ask?

What about you?  What dismays you about the slow draining away of anything intellectual or interesting on American television?  What are you looking forward to coming back?  What will you not watch, no matter how much they shove it down your throat?

In my review posted yesterday, I said four lucky commenters would win a Kresley Cole-autographed copy of the Playing Easy to Get anthology.  Never let it be said that I don’t deliver!  Keep reading to see if you won…

And the winners are…

Send an email with “I’m PLAYING EASY TO GET!” in the subject line, and containing your physical address to theduckeez(at)gmail(dot)com.  We’ll send your book right out to you!

Congratulations!

Hi folks – haven’t been around a lot the last couple of weeks due to a work project.  But I just couldn’t pass this one up…

After I read Lynne Connolly’s report from RT about the cover model who Lost It, I wondered how does a cover model go about losing it, and is there anything we can do to help them along.  I came up with the following list.  Please feel free to add to it.  Or criticize me for being an insensitive witch.  I’m surprisingly okay with either reaction.   

How to Drive a Cover Model Insane, in ten easy steps…

10. Replace their baby oil with WD40 and then ask them to sit on a hard chair.  That might be kind of fun actually…

9. Replace all the mirrors at a shoot with fun-house mirrors.

8. Put Ben-Gay in their thong/jock and then make then stand still for three hours during a photo shoot.

7. Tell them they have to pose with this woman.

6. Replace their hair gel with the stuff used in There’s Something About Mary (yes I know what it was).

5. Tell them they’re actually Fabio’s love child with this woman.

4. Tell them their next Harlequin “guys & daughters” photoshoot is with this little girl.

3. Tell them the trend is hairy men, right after a full-body wax.

2. Tell them Nathan Kamp got all of the cover model jobs left.  Oh wait…

and the #1 way to make a cover model Lose It…

1. Don’t give the Mr. Romance award to them!

Any of you have some ideas on how best to drive a cover model insane?  Comment here and share the giggle.

Gwen is thinking CRAZY crazy things…. and saying things like keep 2 years of our amazingness active and permanently archiving the rest? Or some such crazy talk… it started with me saying Gwen find this post (which oddly didn’t exist… go figure)… so what do you think of this crazy gwen-like talk of ditching old posts?

Or just sit back and keep on rollin baby… you know what time it is….

Ttttttttaaaaarrrrrraaaaaaaa make me stop

keep rollin, rollin, rollin, rollin WHAT lol karen I like this song more than the Wheels on the bus one…

…what would it be?  For example…

• Do you ever get as aroused as it appears in the photos/paintings?
• Have you read any of the books you pose for?
• Is there anyone else there when the cover pic is taken, or is the heroine photoshopped in later?
• Are you photoshopped?
• Who are you thinking off to get the “come hither” look to look genuine?
• How many hours a day do you spend doing stomach crunches?
• Is “manscaping” an all-over kind of thing, or just the chest?
• How difficult is it to get all that baby oil off after a cover shoot?

Ask away in the comments - I might have a surprise for you next weekend…

le sigh… really, it turns out often that even though Gwen is a real live girl vs a Pinocchio wooden one (although she would suck as a jiminy cricket type), it would seem many of our conversations only take place in my head (I think that might say something about me – shut up).And on that note… I have the list and I might even know how to post it but first I an going to display my AWESOME driving powers and go to work. GO TEAM ME. Prolly should make sure Hilary hasn’t forgotten about us and given away the books… that would sort of suck rocks.OW! DO not throw things. At least not yet. *I* was ill(er than normal).  So you would aim at GWEN. So it would be THAT way (pointing slightly northwest of me). Thank you. And really… I have much awesomeness planned… you want me around. That Gwen chick… she just makes things pretty.

heeeeeeeeeeeeeee I know… it is sad no one amuses me as much AS me….

You may have seen this out in Internetlandia, but, in honor of my four nephews (yes I feel sorry for my sister-in-law) who I just found out have tried to jump off their roof to see if a sheet was a good parachute (it wasn’t – go figure), I thought I’d share.  Not all of these have been tried by my nephews, by the way, though I can’t imagine it will be long before they do…

1. A king-size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2,000 sq.ft. house 4″ deep.
2. If you spray dustbunnies with aerosol hairspray and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
3. A 3-year old Boy’s voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42-pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape.
5. However, it is strong enough that, if tied to a paint can, it can get paint on all four walls of a 20′x20′ room.
6. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. However, when using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit.
7. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
8. The glass in windows (even double-paned) does not stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
9. When you hear the toilet flush and then the words ‘uh oh’, it’s already too late.
10. Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
11. A six-year old boy can start a fire with flint even if a 36-year old man says they only do it in the movies.
12. Certain Lego’s will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old boy.
13. “Playdough” and “microwave” should not be used in the same sentence.
14. Super-glue is forever.
15. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can’t walk on water.
16. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
17. VCR’s do not eject PB&J sandwiches, no matter what you see on TV.
18. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
19. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
20. You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.
21. Always look in the oven before you turn it on.
22. Plastic toys do not like ovens.
23. Some plastic toys make a LOT of smoke.
24. The  Austin, TX fire department has a 5-minute response time.
25. The washing machine spin cycle does not make earthworms dizzy.
26. It will, however, make cats dizzy.
27. Cats poop and pee twice their body weight when dizzy.
28. Women will pass this list on to friends.
29. Men will try mixing Clorox and brake fluid.

I’m going to qualify this post first by asking you to keep in mind I’m not a virgin, nor am I a prude. But, since I’m not running for office, I think I can tell you a few not-so-politically-correct things about myself:

• Much to my mother’s disappointment, I only go to church on high-holy days.
• I inhaled in high school college and I imbibe in hard liquor.
• I watch, and enjoy, the occasional porn and read erotica.
• Though I love men with an unabated passion, I had my daughter on my own, without a husband, by choice.
• I believe consenting adults are free to do anything that doesn’t hurt themselves (unless they want it to) or others.
• And last, and most important, I am quite content with my decisions in life.

Of course, all of this is scandalous to my sixth generation Texan mother, who was raised in a proper Southern Baptist house with proper expectations, etc. That’s why we pretend she doesn’t know any of this.  She still loves me despite all my “faults.”  And, all that said, I am still VERY conservative about what I want to expose my 8-year old daughter to.

I recently reviewed a book, A Reason to Sin by Maureen McKade, which was mislabeled as “Reading level: Young Adult” on Amazon.com. That really bothered me as a parent.  I’m not saying ARtS is rife with sin, as ironic as that would be – it’s a very respectable Western Historical Romance with some Suspense elements. However, it was clearly written for an adult audience (trust me).  I’m sure this is a SNAFU of Amazon’s and not the author or the publisher – they both clearly do not call this a YA book.  Why Amazon does, I couldn’t begin to guess.

Does wanting to control the information my daughter has make me a prude? I don’t think so. It’s a choice all parents have to make: at what age do you feel comfortable exposing (figuratively speaking) your YA to adult themes?

It’s why we have movie ratings and electronic game ratings. So that PARENTS can make the choice for their kids and not the other way around. Mislabeling something in an era where labels are relied upon is taking the control away from the parent.  THAT is something I frown upon most severely. I rely upon retailers to label their merchandise accurately and this book, most decidedly, is NOT accurately labeled by Amazon.

What about you folks? Anyone else out there peeved about mislabeling in today’s world? I’m not talking about selling a size 4 as a size 12 (although I’m sure that’s what they did to a skirt I bought – I am NOT gaining weight, dammit).

I’m talking about standards and who should be accountable for them.  How much reliance do you put in an advisory label and how much of your own research do you do to make sure it’s the correct label for your family?

I laughed myself sick over this music video:

Then I laughed myself sick and hoarse over his response: