If you don't, that's okay. I'm sure we have enough for everyone.
Right now, in addition to Black and Decker (our fosters who are old enough to be adopted), we have NINE foster kittens from two separate litters. One litter (four kittens) was inadvertently abandoned when the homeowner's dogs chased off their Mom. The other five are the product of a cat we call Black Kitten, who was from a litter of ferals last summer that we couldn't catch. We need to catch her now and get her fixed as well, but right now she's just missing her babies. Poor Mom Cat. I wish it could be different for her, but getting the kittens tamed, fixed, and adopted is the best plan overall.
The kittens all seem tameable, knock wood. We even have names for all of them, if you can imagine. In the first litter we have three boys and a girl, and they are called Rupert, Otis, Harry, and Stella. The second litter has two girls and three boys, so we have Sabine, Edie, Grendel, Loki, and Thor. The obligatory cute photos are forthcoming.
First of all, a big Happy Birthday to my niece, Meredith. She a one year old today! From what I understand she spent a quiet evening in the company of her parents, big brother Max, and faithful dog Ruby. A good time was had by all in St. Louis.
My brother-in-law John is also in the news in his home state of Colorado. John and his partner are taking their new business venture on the road to Florida, in the hopes of meeting potential vendors. Good luck to him! The husband likes the Cargo Jacket, even if we'd just keep dog treats in it.
On another note, it seems that the BBC has conspired to keep the most recent edition of Dr. Who out of our household. We downloaded from numerous places, but each one had issues that meant we couldn't watch it (or could watch it, but not hear it. Or hear it, but the video remains frozen in a specific frame. Or seems to be going along just fine, them suddenly stops. I think you get the picture).
If you also download the Dr., please contact me and let me know if you have a nice copy of The Empty Child that we can share. Many thanks.
While most libraries are (rightly) striving to protect patrons who use their computers from government snooping, which includes purging user information once the patron has logged off, one library is taking things in a different direction. Naperville Public Library, based in a Chicago suburb, will employ US Biometrics to use fingerprint scanners in place of a library card to allow patron access to computer workstations. They will utilize this data to allow and monitor computer access. Note in the article how teens and young adults are scapegoated as justification for this wrongheaded and unnecessary compromise of citizen privacy. Last I heard, public librarians were neither in loco parentis nor agents of the State.
Cost for the library? $40,646. Cost for the FBI? Priceless.
Haven't written in a while and that's bad. The whole point of this thing is to keep others informed on the minutiae of my life, and here I am disappointing them.
Rough week. Felt crappy and somewhat fluish, ended up missed work at the bookstore because of it. Had a map crisis with the book, but it's all sorted out now and on to the presses. Now all I have to do is submit my bill and I'm done with Eccentric California for the time being.
Today was okay overall. Mellow really, which is good. We went to a dog show at the Fairgrounds and spent time with a lot of the FBNC people we know and their dogs. My god, the dogs! SO cute, especially these two new Member's puppies. One was fawn and one was this really nice dark fawn, he was adorable. We didn't take Fes because he was being too squirrelly, but he's going to watch them show tomorrow. I totally want another one, but we'll see.
We also went to Home Depot (as so many people do of a Saturday evening) and took Fes along. He was much admired of course, and fairly well-behaved.
Soon we'll be watching Dr. Who (I know it's a bit late in the evening, but we had issues with the download), then I think some reading before bed.
Hope you had a decent kinda day, too.
Since I seem to have no time to post when I actually think of something to say, there might be more of this type of "Combo" posts.
I really think what they're doing is silly. For *&^*^& sake, they just want to download the shows because they aren't shown in the UK yet! Be flattered! Use this as leverage to get better syndication prices. Don't take this away. Sure, come down hard on the people who post films currently being shown in theatres, but leave plain old television alone.
On another note, I got us really good seats to Wicked in September. I am also hoping for a good Le Miz seat for myself (can't ever see it enough) and maybe some White Christmas ones around the holidays as well.
In Tulsa, they're moving the gay-themed kid's books. Not to an "Adults Only" section, but to a "parenting collection".
Parenting Collections, in my experience, can be one of two things. Often times, they're collections of adult books of the "bringing up baby" variety, housed in the in the children's room for the convenience of parents.
The other kind of parenting section, the kind of parenting section that they're building in Tulsa, is different*. Basically, it's a section where you stash books written, designed, and published for children, about which the adults in your community are willing to throw a hissy fit. It is not a perfect compromise, not by a long shot. We know that in Tulsa, that shelf will be where the books with gay characters will go; other places it'll also be books with illustrations of naked people, books about puberty and pregnancy, maybe even books about death and evolution. By setting those aside, we're saying, "This stuff is special, dirty, dangerous. This stuff could hurt your children. Be careful." Are there parents who won't go look at the scary shelf? Yes. Are there parents who will yell at their kids for looking at the scary shelf? Yes. It's also clear that moving such books into a special section says, "If you are like this, you are not completely welcome here". On some level, it is the community condoning bigotry, under the rhetoric of preserving 'parental choice'.
I'm glad the books aren't being withdrawn; I'm glad they're not being sent to an Adults-only section; I hope the 'parenting section' is accessible and non-intimidating. I hope the librarians make sure the stuff that gets ripped off and defaced gets replaced. I will send them an e-mail shortly and tell them just that.
I also hope there's a public outcry, and the citizens of Tulsa say they don't want their libraries condoning this crap. Although I highly doubt it.
Why, when I think of this strange type of segregation, do I think of U.S.-based Internment camps during WWII?
* Some might say it's a cop-out, and there are moments when I'd agree. But the good librarians working in Tulsa are working under siege as far as I'm concerned, and while I don't support this compromise, the fact of the matter is that they're doing a job I am not willing to do, and I'm not interested in adding to their burden. Better to work to defeat the folks that backed them into this corner.
Today I will turn in my final paper for the semester, which means I'm DONE with school until the fall. YAY! I decided not to take anything this summer because none of the courses interested me. Today was also the day we request classes for fall, and I've asked for both Archiving and Web Design. I said I only wanted one, and the school will let me know which one I get to take in a few weeks. It took me an hour to get to the Request page, largely because it was the first day and courses tend to be on a first come, first serve basis. This will be the third time I've requested the Web Design course, maybe I'll be one of the lucky winners this time around.
It was a pretty good morning until fear reared its ugly head and I read that Oklahoma lawmakers have just passed a resolution asking that all gay-themed children's books and "other age-inappropriate material" be moved to the adult section of public libraries. The resolution is requesting resolution asks libraries to confine homosexually themed books and other age-inappropriate material to areas exclusively for adult access and distribution.
In the vast majority of American libraries all patrons have access to, and can check out, all items in a library, regardless of age*. So in order to do as this resolution requests, librarians are going to have to create separate gay collections, of adult and teen and childrens' materials, restricted to adults (because "access to" means "looking at"). I guess they will also have to be patrolled as well, to ensure that kids don't happen to find a book where a character is anything less than completely heterosexual.
Don't get me wrong; it's entirely appropriate for parents to make decisions about what their children are exposed to. However, it is not appropriate to make sweeping judgments and to effectively ban people from unintentionally coming across material they may or may not agree with. If we could do that, I'd prefer we start with something like Mein Kampf. But that still wouldn't be right.
What if books with interracial couples are next, or books with single parents in them? I mean, we don't necessarily know how they became single parents, do we?
The whole thing just makes me sad about some of the things going on in America, again.
*I know some places do restrict R-rated videos, and I have heard of libraries where children are restricted to the children's collection, but those are few and far between, and I'd imagine most libraries in OK don't operate that way. Yet.
So the judge in the England case decided to declare a mistrial, saying that he didn't think she understood what she was doing was wrong and won't accept her guilty plea. What crap!
Of COURSE she knew what she was doing; they all did. And it was wrong. But hey, why let the U.S. troops take responsibility for their actions? Most of them were just reservists, so why hold them up to any kind of moral standard???
I knew the U.S. was going to find a way out of letting the folks at Abu Ghraib walk, but this is particularly innovative. And repugnant.
I could browse through these wonderful pulp fiction book covers for hours. In truth, I probably have.
Equally fun is the online exhibit of pulp crime novels, presented by the University of Buffalo Library. Browse through the covers and you'll find all manner of weird, campy, misogynist, and creepy images.
I am trying to be good. Really. The proofing and indexing of Eccentric California is complete, and I will shortly begin proofing the maps. And I have a quiz due. And my head hurts sooooooo much, very likely some kind of allergy thing. So I have a lot to, but the Sundance Channel is trying to stop me.
See, they're showing The Staircase, and in my current state I can't help but be enraptured by it. This eight-part documentary about the Michael Peterson murder trial by the French director Jean Xavier de Lestrade is completely engrossing, largely because of its minutiae and his unprecedented level of access. You want to see what really goes on behind the scenes in a high-profile murder trial? Start watching this and you won't be able to stop.