Pro-Choice TV

You migh have figured out that I enjoy the liberal/conservative debate. I'm watching "Cold Case"--the episode on the death of a teenager the night his girlfriend gave birth and left their daughter in a trash can. I realized that there are at least 2 episodes where abortion was at least a preliminary cause of death for the victim (you know--getting killed for being pro-choice). I'm not sure whether it was actually the pro-lifers that killed the person in either case, but it's still a major point of the show.

It just made me think about other television shows--conservatives like to complain about the liberal agenda and the media. It seems like pro-life is often portrayed in a negative light in these crime dramas. I don't know whether you could choose to show pro-choice in a bad light, though. I mean, it's not like we're naieve about what an abortion entails, and when the nurse went into detail to convince the boyfriend to choose otherwise, it was pretty explicit that it's not a pleasant option. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't see pro-choicers getting portrayed as murderers. I mean, in the most obvious sense: to go out and kill another adult in either hot or cold blood. I don't think that there are any real-life examples either.

Presidential Material

Last night's news informed us of Santorum's littlest child being sick and in the hospital with a poor outlook given all of the rest of her health. This made me wonder--would the death of a child make for a poor male president.

One of Palin's complaints about politics as usual was that she felt uncomfortable telling the public of her last pregnancy. Her reasoning was pretty sound--for generations the illness that is pregnancy has meant that a further gap in the abilities of man and woman. There is the idea that once a woman gets pregnant her emotions will suddenly overcome her and she will be left a dripping ball of goo. Worries about post-partum depression arise and whether it will affect her judgment--furthering the idea that a woman is thus inferior to a man.

So, in this "post-modern" world, what does this mean for men? I think women have done a pretty good job of showing that we do not become fainting daisies while pregnant and working, so what about what happens to men when an equally "traumatic" event happens: such as when a child dies? Don't men also grieve? Or do we have our heads still stuck up our butts where men are concerned and falsely believe that they will all (and this really is the destinction--we live in a unanimous world) stand strong and make the right decisions with complete separation from their mental state?

We complain that Clinton and Gingrich thought with their "little heads", but maybe we need to step back and wonder at how many decisions are made with a broken heart.

Do I think this should be held against Santorum? No. Do I think that we should use examples like this to bridge the gap between males and females? Certainly. 

Book Covers

I've been reading a mad number of romances by a Kristan Higgins. I'm not usually one for romances (for purely romance's sake) but these are actually pretty good. Whenever I've picked up one of my mom's before I'd always hit one spot where I'd have to role my eyes and tell the main girl to get a life. So far, that's only happened twice (one was for half the book, so mainly I just skipped over the parts where a 30 year old woman was acting like a 14 year old girl--once that part was ignored, the rest of the book wasn't half bad). Anyway, that's not really the point of this post.

I HATE it when the cover of a book isn't proper to the story. I mean, come on--don't the artists read the books? Or maybe even meet with the author to know what to do for the cover?!? For instance, the book I'm reading now has a girl sitting on the guys lap while in a rocking chair with a dog at their feet. Fine. The chair has a big part of this book. The problem? A: the chair isn't described as painted white in the book. In fact, it's described as "honey-colored tiger maple"--very distinctive. And B: the dog is supposed to be a husky mutt--a gray and white husky mutt, not the red irish setter or whatever they stuck on the cover. Really?!?

Now, I don't always complain about inaccurate book covers. For example, the Dresden Files. I mean, the guy very rarely wears a hat, and when he does, it's a baseball cap. But, oftentimes on the cover of a book (actually, I want to say that the first time we see Dresden himself on the cover is like 7 books into the series) he's wearing what I guess is called a fedora. I think it works perfectly. I guess it's because when you read the first few books Dresden doesn't come across as that...I don't know...dark, or ruggedly handsome, or whatever. I always picture him as a nerdy looking guy--tall, skinny, funny looking face. The hat helps enforce the idea that he's not supposed to be that bad to look at. I think the hat works to give a visualization of the man who Dresden really is--without it he might look a lot more average...does that even make sense? Either way, the hat does a lot for the character, even if it's entirely fiction to the book-verse. I mean, I saw a fan picture of Dresden and Sue and he's not wearing the hat--he'd look a lot more bad-ass with the hat, and given the nature of the picture, that's saying something.

Edit: whoops...my bad. However, my dog skills are pretty good. That is an irish setter on the cover and she belongs to the guy. But then, where's her dog?!? And the rocking chair is still the wrong color.

Redundancies?

Obama is going to try to shrink government by getting rid of redundancies such as the Commerce Department. I'm sure even the least governmentally informed of this country know about Rick Perry's gaffe when he forgot the names of the departments he would end, so now that Obama is going to attempt such a feat, shouldn't he be happy? I haven't heard any replies, except from the collective that is the Republican Party, that says that Obama's only doing it because the Republican's wanted to first (yes, the is of course a stupid reason to do anything...sarcasm). I personally think that this is the best way for Obama to win the re-election--take everything on the Republicans' platforms and attempt to do them. If he can get them completed, then American's will like him. If he can't get them passed, then he proves that they are impossible promises and also makes congress look even more ineffective (if a Democratic President can't get Republican ideas passed in a split congress, then how could a Republican get the same laws passed?). It's a win-win situation.

Sorry for how dippy this sounds--I'm fuzzy headed today--stupid cold. I guess I should go back to melting crayons (got a Crayola Crayon Maker for Christmas)--not too much thinking in that.

Books, Books, and More Books

I read a LOT during the latter part of 2011. I'm not sure what caused it, but after I found goodreads.com, I read double my figured challenge (I said that I could read 20 books between September 1and December 31 and I read 40). I guess what really helped my numbers was finding a couple of vampire series that I love. The first isn't so much vampires, but everything supernatural (and by the way, awesome), and is The Dresden Files. It actually makes me sad that I didn't learn about this series until now, and I might not have read the first book so voraciously except that it was the weekend of Hurricane Irene (we had no power for 2.5 days) and I'd already read the two books I had--my dad was the first to order Dresden and  I stole it off his pile.

The truth is, I didn't read much during my four years of university--whenever I had free time I had a tall stack of mail to answer, so books took a step back in importance. 'Course, my mail pile is huge now anyway because I've been going on some serious reading binges. I guess I need to learn some amount of time-management, but maybe that's not a good thing. I don't think I'd write a good letter if I wasn't really in the mood to do so. But I digress.

The Dresden Files are amazing and if you love supernatural books, you've probably already read them and are waiting for the next one--I'm just late to the party. However, I'm sitting here enjoying Dead Beat with like 5 more books ahead of me to enjoy next while you are stuck counting down the days, so maybe I don't care that I'm behind ;-P.

The second vampire series is The Morganville Vampires which are very teeny, but I like the main character. She really grows up each book, which is very good. I wasn't a fan of the vampires that attacked the teen shelf for the past five years or so, but I guess I was just annoyed by Twilight (which I still think is a terrible role model for our girls--I liked a meme I read which compared Bella to Ginny Weasley--When Edward broke up with Bella to save her life, she went into a coma for 4 months then tried to kill herself to hear his voice; When Harry broke up with Ginny to save her life, she helped organize an army and kicked ass. Claire definitely is more of a Ginny than a Bella, though I read some very poor reviews of the first book that I want to discuss here:

First, on ratings/reviews in general: you should never trust the ratings on books in a series to tell you about the series as a whole. This is because many people will read the first book, hate it for one reason or another, rate it badly, and will never read the second. All subsequant books will probably be skewed high because only people who liked the first book will read the second. I also will take the time to comment on the rating system of Goodreads--I don't like it. You have the choice of five stars, but they're all skewed upwards. If you look at what they say a star is worth, one is I hated it, two is It's okay, three is I liked it, four is I loved it, five is It was amazing! (or something like that). I like systems where three is neutral--so then it would be the "okay" option. My ratings are all fives with the occasional four or three--it's not because I think they were all amazing on the lines of Catch 22, but because when I made three just okay, a five is I really liked it.

Secondly, the frist book in Morganville Vampires does take a lot of removal from reality to believe and enjoy. I will admit that when I read a lot of the reviews after reading the book, I realized that I'd allowed a lot of plot "twinges" which I normally wouldn't. But I'm glad that I did because the later books explain better why it wasn't possible for Claire to call the police or her parents. Maybe Rachel Caine didn't even think twice about these problems when she wrote Glass Houses, but she fixed them after complaints were made, I don't really care. All I'm saying is that you should probably read the first 3 books as though they were the same book. Will I say that Rachel Caine is writing a soap opera so that people have to buy the next book immediatly after it's written? Hell's Yes. Does it make it a terrible series? No.

Let's see, what else have I read? I don't want to just run down my list of books from Goodreads--that's cheating and not very entertaining. Oh, I started Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series (he's the guy who wrote Dresden  for those not in the know). I think it's okay--but it gets such a "low" rating from me not because it's not a great series, but because I"m not a fan of the way it's written. The characters are great, the plot is great, everything is great--I just hate books which have 3 or 4 different stories running around because the main characters are all in different places. Most of the Star Wars books do this, which is why I've only read the teen books (where the twins learn to use their powers) and The Courtship of Princess Leia. I want one or two main characters and when they're apart, only one gets to live the story in "live time"--the other people must fill in the rest of us about their activities.

Oh, I read a pair of hilarious teen books based on the premise of the only 'fair' godmother. In fact that's the name of the first book My Fair Godmother. A high school aged girl whose life apparently sucks (according to her) gets help from her Godmother, who is trying to get into Fairy Godmother University by doing some extra credit work--which she kinda sucks at. But if ever there was a story that accurately fits the trope Hilarity Ensues, this is it. They're the literal re-working of fairy tales (the girl gets sent back into the past to be Cinderella and realizes what a crummy gig it is) and I think they are just the books to hand to any teenage girl who thinks her life is crummy--she'll quickly learn that it can, in fact, get worse. I'm excited because the second book in the "series" hinted that there will be a third attempt for Chrissy to do her extra credit in a way that gets her into the University--yay!

I also started reading The Princess Diaries series. I'm not generally a fan of the "diary" way of writing a book, but it works. I'm currently trying to read the sequel to Wolf Tower and it's annoying me. I guess it's because it's too close to how I'd write a diary--I'd start out alluding to terrible things that are actually important before bothering to talk about the mundane things that led up to the ordeal. The Princess Diariesi doesn't do it that way, and now that I think about it, Beka Cooper doesn't either. So maybe I don't have a problem with the diary, just when it tries to build suspense by leaving too many questions open too soon?

I guess that's enough of a general overview to give. Maybe I'll do a better job of updating now, but who knows.

Analogies

Two main points here: Climate Change and Multiple Gods

Okay, so the first analogy I'm sharing from a Fora.tv lecture on the politics of climate change and how poorly it's been discussed in the media (here). The analogy is looking at one snow storm to disprove the existence of Global Warming. The professor explains that it's like trying to determine Willie Mays cumulative batting average by looking at July of 1958. Which is a great way of thinking abou it.

The second analogy is one that I came up with this morning while thinking about where to take the story that I'm writing (link here). The story revolves around a 24 year old woman who is able to take away syptoms of illness and therefore increase the quality of life of the people in the town she lives in. The problem? There's a group of people who apsolutely hate her--and sue me if they look like my idea of demon-spawn: Christians so certain about their own superiority that they spew hatred instead of all the good parts of Christianity--love of your neighbors.

Well, while working through the scene where she confronts the mother of her love interest (I write romances, sue me again), who is a member of the offending church, the mother asks something about whether Scarlet (the main character) believes in God. Scarlet says that it's probably not the same God as the Browns, which, of course, frightens the mother because Christians are notoriously very unhappy with the idea of more than one "True God". Scarlet tries to get out of a theological debate, but the mother's curiosity overwhelms. Scarlet then comes up with this wonderful analogy to the idea of multiple Gods:

"Picture the maple tree outside. Is it the only maple tree in the world? No, of course not. There are maples all over the country and they are all different. They are all affected by the environment where they grow--by the minute differences in nitrogen and phosphorous levels--by whether they are in a city or the country--by whether someone cares for it or not. This is the same for God. The theological being is completely different for everyone--it doesn't matter whether it's two people sitting next to each other in a pew or two people where one goes to a Catholic church and one goes to a Methodist church. I call this multiple Gods. Few people would agree with the Phelps' that their God is your God, and yet they came to their conclusion reading the same book as all other Christians--just as all maples start out with the basic book of "maple-ness" that is then altered by the environment that they grow."

I'm not sure if that debate will make it into the final draft--especially since the story is no where near the point where that discussion is held. I write linearly--I start a story at the beginning and write until it ends--but I imagine the story for months to see how it can get to where it goes. I probably lose a lot of great material because I brainstorm only within my brain, but then again, it's those key events that you know need to go into the story because you keep going back to them.