there oughta be a law

My current pet peeve is people who put up yard-sale signs that just say "TODAY!" with no date. This is evil and wrong. People who do that should be legally required to go around after the yard sale is over and take down every single sign they put up. And if your yard sale was on a previous day, and I find a sign with your address on it saying "Yard sale today," I should be allowed to come to your house and choose one item in your possession, and you have to give it to me for fifty cents, regardless of whether it were something you had actually tried to sell at the yard sale.

If I'm feeling charitable, I'd add a caveat to the law that it only applies to small items like books, CDs, etc. -- but only when I'm feeling charitable. ;) All your TV are belong to me!

In other peeve news, I'm getting a teeny little bit irritated with all the people going around saying stuff like, "If you care at all about America, you must go see Fahrenheit 9/11!" or "If you live in America and you plan to vote, you must go see Fahrenheit 9/11!" OK, I live in America and care about America and plan to vote ... so are YOU going to come to my house and babysit my child while I see a movie? For that matter, are you gonna pay the nine bucks? Because I have a mortgage, people.

Don't get me wrong -- I want to see the movie, I value its message and I think it's probably a pretty important movie for a lot of people to see (despite the fact that Michael Moore himself is getting progressively more annoying by the day). But this hyperbole is just as bad as the stuff the other side slings at us -- you know, the "if you say anything bad about W, it means you hate America and support terrorists!" crowd. Let's not stoop to that level, okay people?

I know I'm feeling snarky when I end not one but TWO paragraphs with "people" like that. ;) OK, time for my morning caffeine. ;)

books

Last week I read If I Pay Thee Not In Gold by Piers Anthony and Mercedes Lackey. It left a really bad taste in my mouth. To say that it thoroughly sucked would be a slight overstatement, but only slight. The thing is, I can see how many people, including the authors, might want to characterize this book as "feminist fantasy" -- protagonist a warrior woman in a matriarchal society -- but in fact it's almost anti-feminist, and depressingly so, especially in the ways it subtly (almost as if unknowingly) reinforces the same tired old gender stereotypes that make so much of fantasy almost unreadable.

That last sentence was terrible. Sorry. My point is, I think the authors thought they were writing a daringly feminist tale, when in fact they were really just barfing up the same old crap again and putting a little gender twist on it to make it look different. A typical fantasy novel in drag, you might say. The authors would do well to read something like plaidder's epic Women on Fire, if they want to see how good feminist fantasy is done.

Furthermore, the authors obviously have fallen into that trap where they're so well-known and popular that their work doesn't actually have to submit to editing. The characterization and plotting in this book were awful. "Show, don't tell," remember?

Ugh. Anyway, so now I'm reading the latest Donald Westlake in hopes of cleansing my literary palate. So far so good.

Also, the week before last I read The Eye of Night by Pauline Alama. It was pretty interesting, a somewhat different sort of fantasy novel. Toward the end it sort of suffered from "not sure how to end the story" syndrome, with three or four different "endings" that aren't actually endings, but overall a good read.

Baby Pix

I uploaded a whole bunch of June pix to Isaac's website. (I also redesigned the site a little -- removed the frames, which were seeming redundant and unnecessary. I doubt anyone will miss them.)

There are some nice shots from his birthday party, plus a sort of "Day in the Life" chronicle of his birthday. And then, of course, the breastfeeding-in-hammock pix! How can you resist those? :) Notice how his top leg is up in the air. He always lifts it up and waves it around while he nurses. It cracks me up. :)