Month: April 2009

WTF? Georgia Senate Threatens to Secede!

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2009-04-16

7:23 pm

3 Comments on WTF? Georgia Senate Threatens to Secede!

Civil Rights, News

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Geor­gia Sen­ate threat­ens dis­man­tling of USA
They real­ly did, by a vote of 43–1. On April 1, but it was­n’t an April Fool’s joke.

The res­o­lu­tion goes on to endorse the the­o­ry that states have the right to abridge con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms of reli­gion, press and speech. Accord­ing to the res­o­lu­tion, it is up to the states to decide “how far the licen­tious­ness of speech and of the press may be abridged.”
(snip)
Final­ly, the res­o­lu­tion states that if Con­gress, the pres­i­dent or fed­er­al courts take any action that exceeds their con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers, the Con­sti­tu­tion is ren­dered null and void and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is offi­cial­ly dis­band­ed. As an exam­ple, the res­o­lu­tion specif­i­cal­ly states that if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment enacts “prohibitions of type or quan­ti­ty of arms or ammunition,” the coun­try is disbanded.

You bet­ter believe that I’m writ­ing to our state sen­a­tor right away. Yes, this non­sense was slipped in on day 39 of the 40 day leg­isla­tive ses­sion, but that is absolute­ly no excuse. Our rep­re­sen­ta­tives have no busi­ness vot­ing for any­thing they haven’t thor­ough­ly read, under­stood, and debat­ed. That’s their job!

Yet anoth­er rea­son I don’t want to live in Geor­gia any more. I seri­ous­ly think this is a back­lash against our elec­tion of a black Demo­c­rat to the pres­i­den­cy. I’m look­ing at blue states now.

Review: Suite 606 by J.D. Robb (and company)

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2009-04-07

6:49 pm

2 Comments on Review: Suite 606 by J.D. Robb (and company)

Reading

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Suite 606 Suite 606 by J.D. Robb

My review


rat­ing: 1 of 5 stars
I only read the sto­ry by J.D. Robb. I glanced at the oth­er three, but they’re pri­mar­i­ly romance sto­ries, which do NOT inter­est me.

The whole point of these lit­tle antholo­gies is to intro­duce read­ers who enjoy an estab­lished author’s work to oth­er, sim­i­lar authors, right? 

I know that J.D. Robb is a pen name for Nora Roberts. I know that the sto­ries she pub­lish­es as NR are romances. If I saw an anthol­o­gy anchored by an NR sto­ry, I’d expect it to be full of romances.

How­ev­er, I don’t read the NR stuff. I only read her JDR books, which have a lit­tle roman­tic spice about the main char­ac­ter, Eve Dal­las, and her hus­band Roarke, with occa­sion­al glimpses into Eve’s part­ner, Peabody’s, rela­tion­ship with her guy, McNab. That’s it, though. Nei­ther of those sets of rela­tion­ships are the focal point of the plots. The mystery/crime is the main thing, and while they’re set in the future with the advan­tages of tech­nol­o­gy we don’t yet have, they’re essen­tial­ly police pro­ce­du­rals. (I don’t con­sid­er them SF, quite, because all the tech seems to be extrap­o­lat­ed from what we have now, and quite plau­si­ble. And, of course, the tech isn’t the point of the sto­ries, either.)

So why not put sim­i­lar sto­ries in an anthol­o­gy anchored by a JDR sto­ry? Why why why? Mis­lead­ing and dis­ap­point­ing read­ers is NOT the way to gar­ner any pos­i­tive buzz for the less­er-known authors, and the back­lash can lead to less enthu­si­asm from estab­lished read­ers (like me) for the estab­lished author’s work.

View all my reviews.

Online Job Hunt — Heard of this place?

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2009-04-04

4:58 am

3 Comments on Online Job Hunt — Heard of this place?

General

Yes, yes–I promise this is the last post for now. Prob­a­bly for the week­end, but at least for a few hours!

I con­tin­ue to hope to find some kind of work that I can do from home despite my unco­op­er­a­tive body. Of course, most list­ings for “work at home” and “telecom­mute” jobs are com­plete rip-offs. I don’t real­ly have the ener­gy to go the full self-employ­ment route, which involves doing all the mar­ket­ing and billing and col­lec­tions and such (if you do, check out Noël Figart’s very cool series of ongo­ing posts, How to Make a Liv­ing From Home: A Free Course). More pre­cise­ly, if I do all that stuff, I wor­ry that I won’t have any ener­gy left to do the actu­al income-gen­er­at­ing tasks.

I don’t remem­ber how, pre­cise­ly, but I ran across Vir­tu­al Voca­tions a while back, and have looked around the site a few times. I’ve yet to actu­al­ly pony up the fee to get access to the con­tact infor­ma­tion for the job list­ings, but the fact that they allow any­body to see the rest of the list­ings with­out pay­ing is pret­ty nice.

The only gen­uine­ly-neg­a­tive thing I’ve come across about them any­where is a per­son who claimed that they con­tact Craigslist posters who have stat­ed that they do NOT want to be con­tact­ed by third par­ties. I don’t like that at all, but it isn’t quite a killing blow. The only “it’s a ripoff” com­plaints I’ve seen are anony­mous com­ments left on any blog that posts a VV review. I give those all the seri­ous­ness of the com­menter’s will­ing­ness to back up his words–meaning none.

BUT–people I actu­al­ly know are more cred­i­ble. So have any of you used the site, or do you know some­one who has? What do you think of them?

Jane Austen/Other Book Recommendations?

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2009-04-04

3:18 am

1 Comment on Jane Austen/Other Book Recommendations?

Reading

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Um, I’m want­i­ng some­thing to read, and the libraries are being very slow about ful­fill­ing my hold requests, so I’m look­ing for old stuff that’s good and prob­a­bly on the library shelf just wait­ing to be loved. I think I might try some Jane Austen, as I recent­ly real­ized that I nev­er have, but the excerpts I’ve seen are wit­ti­er than I expect­ed. I’m not fond of romances or “chick lit” or such things, which is where I’ve place her books.1

If I’m going to try them, where should I start? Any oth­er authors/books you think I should try?

I don’t care to read doom-filled, depress­ing sto­ries. There’s enough of that in the real world, and I can always go look at the news. I want to read about smart, like­able peo­ple doing inter­est­ing things while ban­ter­ing wit­ti­ly. Humor is impor­tant, but goofy slap­stick non­sense loos­es me. I HATE HATE HATE “do some­thing obvi­ous­ly stu­pid, try to get out of the result­ing mess” plots. 

I’ve read Lois McMas­ter Bujold, thanks 🙂 Well, all the Vorkosi­gan uni­verse stuff, any­way. Her fan­ta­sy books have nev­er inter­est­ed me, for some odd reason.

Thank you 🙂

1 I think to some extent I got her all mixed up with the Brontës when I was a teen, and damned if I want­ed more of that nonsense.

No Katie Here

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2009-04-04

3:04 am

2 Comments on No Katie Here

Critters, Family

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In much lighter news, The Girl is in the Pacif­ic North­west! For three weeks! She’s scout­ing col­leges and see­ing friends and so on. She’s already in geo-love after just a few days, say­ing she’d like to live there. Her hosts seem like Very Good Peo­ple, and I hope to meet them when they come to town for Dragon*Con.

Kyoshi is utter­ly uncon­solable, though. He wan­ders through the house look­ing for her, return­ing fre­quent­ly to her door (still closed, and no, I won’t open it to let him in), the front door, every sin­gle window—hoping in vain to catch sight of her. I’ve nev­er known such a one-per­son kit­ty! He does come to me and Sam (a lot), fran­ti­cal­ly at times, and he lets us pet him. But he won’t set­tle in our laps long at all. He has to dash to the front win­dows every time a car goes by, just hop­ing it might stop and dis­gorge the girl. I hope he gets more attached to us by the time she returns. Wher­ev­er she goes to school, though, I think she’s going to have to take the cat with her!

I’m less demon­stra­tive than the cat, but I do miss her. I know she’s with good peo­ple, and she’s hav­ing a great time, and she’s a smart young woman with a good head on her shoul­ders. But she’s my baby and she’s way far away and we’ve nev­er been apart for more than two weeks in her whole life!!!

Ok. I’ll try to rein that back a bit.

R.I.P. Uncle J

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2009-04-04

2:18 am

2 Comments on R.I.P. Uncle J

Family

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Uncle J was buried yes­ter­day. He hung on for weeks, and they’d final­ly moved him to home hos­pice care just a few days before he passed. At least he was­n’t in pain at the end, and the fam­i­ly did get to say what­ev­er they need­ed to say.

Mom is tak­ing this real­ly hard. She says it’s con­cern for Aunt B, and I’m sure that’s part of it. I can’t being to imag­ine the agony of los­ing your spouse of 48 years. I have to think, though, that some of it is Mom’s fear that it may be Dad­dy next time. I’m wor­ried about her.