Overdue books - who gets my fine?

Most prolific library users I know have overdue fines.  Hey.... it happens.

I've even observed, or gotten caught up in, bizarre games of one-ups-man-ship about fines.

Photo courtesy: Elena Roussakis
Flickr Creative Commons

"I have, like, six dollars in fines right now."

"Six?  That's nothing!  I've got $22 in fines, and four books I just can't find."

Yikes.

I started this calendar year with a resolution not to incur ANY fines.  I held out for a few months, but like most people, my resolutions usually don't last all that long.  

I've probably paid $15-20 in fines over the last calendar year.  I console myself: well, I'm making a small contribution to the library with my fine money.  That's not such a bad thing, right?

Wrong.

Help for the Haunted

John Searles Help for the Haunted.  Swing.... and a miss.

Help for the Haunted - swing and a miss.

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted a good scare.  I don’t know why.  I felt affinity for the girls (Rose & Sylvie – incidentally, two of my favorite female names).  They seem really lonely, and their experiences: the seemingly supernatural ones, as well as the "real" (spoiler alert) murder of their parents... just tragic.

THIS is how “into” this book I was:  I was reading in bed, about 50 pages from the end.  My husband comes home from his weekly Guys Night Out.  He starts talking with me, and I actually shushed him: “I’m almost done this book, and it’s really suspenseful!” He likes a gripping yarn too, so he let me be.

Disappointment.  But in hindsight, I feel like I should have seen it coming.

Grammar correction! It can happen!

Remember when I slammed Irving for their weird Please Prepay in Advance sign?

Well, miracles can happen.

Saw this at my most recent gas-up at an Irving:

Someone, somewhere, saw the light.  Oh, and it wasn't as grimey and gross as the previous sign.  It's a nice touch.  (Note: Irving has excellent restrooms that are ALWAYS clean.  They deserve kudos for this!)

Onward, Grammarians!

"No honey, there's death in it."

Last weekend, before the big Blizzard hit, I stopped at the library to pick up a few movies and books.  I chanced to overhear the following between a girl (age 9 or so) & her father who were browsing DVDs in the children's room:

Girl: "Can we get Bridge to Terebithia?"

Dad: "No, it has death in it."

Don't be so possessive!

To me, the apostrophe is the most over-used piece of punctuation in 21st century English.

Note the following:

This was posted on the cordoned-off section of the football field, designated for, yeah, you guessed it, coaches and players.

I see this kind of spelling mistake all the time.  I don't get it.... why the obsession with apostrophes?  Is it because we (not so) secretly want to own everything?  

 


Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Mine.

What's wrong with this picture - redux

I won't bore you with a rant on how expensive gas is.

But if I'm going to pay nearly $4/gallon, I deserve better signage.

I know how to pre-pay,

and I know how to pay in advance.

But how exactly do you prepay in advance?

Does that mean I have to pre-prepay? Prepay even before I've thought about paying?

Ugh.  Someone buy me an electric car.

My brain had to work so hard, it made my hair hurt.....

Abandon ye hope, all who enter here.

I don’t know what came over me.  Maybe it was the picture of Moby Dick on the front that intrigued me.  But in the last few weeks I’ve worked my way (emphasis on WORK) through All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.  

Hold all hate mail til the end.



If you have to use post-it flags to read a book,
and you're not reading it for class,
you might be crazy....

 I'd like to say, "here's the whole thing in a nutshell," but there's no nutshell here.  It's a big, brain-wrenching book saying that “an unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose" (book jacket). That “the central challenge of the contemporary world… is not just that we don’t know how to live meaningful lives, it’s that we don’t even seem to be able to focus for very long on the question” (p. 30). That in our 21^st century lives we’re stuck in a depressing existential nihilism (don’t worry, I had to look it up too) where nothing has meaning, no choice is better than any other choice (just look up at the menu at Starbucks and you'll see what I mean).

Whirlwind tour through All Things Shining:

Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame....

I can't cheer about this, though:



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/school-two-easy-local-news-typo_n_1668780.html


To my fellow Domer readers, you'll notice this appeared on our very own WNDU.  Saints preserve us....

Perhaps they should employ more English majors.

Grammar Rant #1

Got Gotye?  Got him stuck in your head?  Think he's amazing?  Somebody thinks he could do better on his grammar:

Grammarly.com looks like a great service (if you worry about your proofing), but their Facebook page is a riot.  At least for grammar/spelling geeks like me.  I'll re-post some of their fun stuff from time to time.

Gotye, I love you, really I do, even if you've twisted fine-and-dandy "Gauthier" into a weird post-Modern spelling in the mistaken belief that we poor American sots would never pronounce it correctly. But I'm over your angst-y, mournful song.  Put on some clothes and release something else!  Making Mirrors is full of great tracks!

Books that Engender (Misplaced) Fear?

Back in May I stumbled across Precious Knowledge, part of the PBS Independent Lens series of documentaries, chronicling the experience of the Ethnic Studies Department of Tucson High School, a public magnet school. Ethnic Studies at THS focus on Mexican-American history, culture, arts, literature, and traditional and contemporary belief. They are open to Latino and non-Latino students (although at this high school, many students are Latino, and so by extension, the majority of students taking Ethnic Studies are Latino). And they have had significant, proven success: of their students, 93% graduate and 85% go on to college, compared to a 48% graduation rate among students who don’t take their class. So, what’s going on in Ethnic Studies?

Whatever it is, the White Arizonans are scared, to the point that they’ve outlawed the class (via AZ HB 2281) and banned a long list of books. Yes, Jan Brewer et al see it as seditious and anti-American, and that their least-favorite, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, causes racial hate. John Huppenthal, AZ State Superintendent of Public Instruction, visits, and despite everything he hears & learns in the classroom, he questions why there’s a photo of Che Guevera in the classroom, but no poster of Benjamin Franklin. (Wha??) Conservatives say that the curriculum flies in the face of wholesome, traditional American values. (Note: the AZ State Superintendent of Public Instruction is an elected position.  In theory, the person who gets elected to this position needn't have a lick of educational expertise.)

Which values? The ones that say we are free to read and write what we want? The ones that say it’s our right to fight against oppression, and to stand up against those who would keep us back, to protest against wrongs? How can these Arizona lawmakers stand there and say that limiting Mexican-American Ethnic Studies is wrong, but Asian-American studies or African-American studies are not divisive? Schools teach about parts of our past, AND our present, much of which may make us uncomfortable. Typically, I think that’s when they’re doing their best.

Precious Knowledge showed video of students and teachers both in and out of the classroom. In spite of the disrespect and distain, even threats of violence toward them, I saw no hatred against America, or against anyone. At the start of each class session, they recite a Mayan-inspired Luis Valdez poem:

In Lak’ech
Tú eres mi otro yo—you are my other me
Si te hago daño a ti,me hago daño a mí mismo.
If I do harm to you, I do harm to myself.
Sí te amo y respeto,me amo y me respeto yo.
If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.

　
According to Xulio Soriano, a Chicano blogger who took Ethnic Studies in high school: "Never did I learn to hate white Christian males. Never was I recruited to join a subversive group in order to overthrow the US Government. Instead, my humanity was acknowledged. What I did learn, alongside Asian, Black, and White students, was a more accurate cultural, artistic, literary and political history of the different contributions that Latin-American immigrants and non-immigrants have given to the fabric of the U.S. identity."

　
The Society of U.S. Intellectual History wrote this: "when [John Huppenthal] sat in on the classes, he commented that the teacher wore a collared [long-sleeved] shirt and tie, and so therefore must be sort of pro-American. When the Brown Berets supported the students at a protest, Tom Horne remarks that their brown shirts, berets, and sunglasses represent anti-American revolutionaries."

Brown shirts are what we should fear?  Really?

Navy "service uniform."
Sharp, yes.  Fearful, hmmm...

Fear the shirt!  Oh, the brown shirt!

Brown Berets.  Be afraid.

Is brown the new black?

Now that it’s been established that the birth of non-white babies in the United States outnumbers the birth of "white" babies, perhaps the tide will turn. I may have white skin, but I abhor the hatred inherent in Jan Brewer, Tom Horne, and the rest of those who cry "Racism!" at an Ethnic Studies class because it celebrates a non-white ethnicity.

***

NOTE: Today the Supreme Court struck down most of Arizona's controversial immigration law.  According to USA Today, "Opponents said it unfairly criminalizes otherwise law-abiding people, opens the door for racial profiling of Hispanics legally in the country and forces state law enforcement to interfere with the intricacies of federal immigration policy."

Spelling rant #1

We're getting to know each other better, so true confessions: I loathe bad spelling and grammar.

One of my husband's colleagues happened to read some of my writing recently, and remarked that even in casual correspondence (an email note to DH), I'm "formal."  If by that he means that I use proper capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, well, so be it.  I'll be the Grammar Queen of England.

Here's today's doozy:

I don't know who MK is, but if this purveyor of supposedly-awesome outdoor clothing can't copy-edit their advertising, I'm not even going to extend them the courtesy of clicking on their link to find out (not even to write them a nasty-gram).  Even if my husband were Grizzly Adams, Bear Grylls, or The Crocodile Hunter, he couldn't love the outdoors enough for me to buy clothes from MK.   "Dad's" is singular possessive... as in "Dad's piece of rope, Dad's blue shirt, Dad's overgrown lawn, or Dad's Irish setter".  Conversely, "Dads" is plural.  And as you might be banking on, MK, there are multiple Dads being feted (fêted?) on Father's Day.  Or is that Fathers' Day?  Or just plain Fathers Day? 

BTW, I might love proper spelling and grammar, but I'm not immune from making my own mistakes.  Feel free to point them out, if you see them, and put me in my place!

Elf Workers of the World.... Unite!

"I should have stayed in dental school."

Just when I thought I was merrily spreading Christmas Cheer, I discover (thank you, Mother Jones) that by shopping online, I have contributed to worker exploitation and human suffering.  Right here in the the good ol' U S of A.

Pity the Elf Slaves of Online Shopping

I haven't bought books on Amazon.com, Borders.com (defunct) or BN.com (although as a former Borders customer, they are working on me... hard) in quite some time.  I think this will make me reconsider buying books online at ALL.  Viva the local bookstore!