Is This Blog On? version 2.0

Since I know have BOTH blogs working, I need to decide which to keep:

So : Vote!.

When is a hate crime of no concern? When the perpetrators are a members of another “protected minority.” That is why when a gay man was killed a few weeks ago, it wasn’t a blip on the radar.

Andrew Anthos, a 72-year-old gay man, was attacked by a black-man who was shouting gay slurs. After being hit in the back of the head with a metal pope, he lingered in a hospital for ten days before he died.

When Matthew Shepherd was murdered by what was believed to be white-male, gay-bashers, the story was everywhere. This time, you have to go to Gay.com to get the news.

The difference? Of course, this murderer was black. And, black homophobia is a taboo subject that scares the media.

Perhaps if the black thug had been a Catholic? Or, a member of the military.

And, I think I’ll have time to say it tomorrow. The tease: why do you think a hate-crime (the killing of a gay man in cold blood) has gone completely unreported?

Any guesses?

I’m working again. I still haven’t figured out how to work this wireless network thing – so I’m busy figuring that out. But, I LOVE my new ‘puter.

This isn’t a new post, it’s the old post with new stuff added on top. AREN’T I CLEVER? Well, anyway, I am unable to post to this, or any it seems, blog. I need to update my OS (yes, I knew that was coming.) So – we decided to bite the bullet and buy a new computer! YEA ME. We’re getting new iMac, of course, and it’s going to be really, really cool. It should be delivered this, or next week.

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Ok, this is really irritating. I’m on day four (at least) of my blog not working. WHAT SHOULD I DO. I can’t post. I left blogger because I couldn’t post … and now after month or so – I can’t post here.

UGH.

Wedding. My brother’s. St. Paul Minnesota. Be back Monday.

Chat among yourselves.

UPDATE:

I’ve returned, but I’m having difficulty posting. Apparently I can edit posts … doesn’t make sense. I’m emailing with support.

But, I’m just bursting to make a comment on this; a story which seems to have hit all the major blogs last night.

George Bush lives environmentalism whereas Al Gore only gives it lip service, yet he’s is hailed as God’s greatest gift to the environment. Meanwhile, he greedily consumes far more energy than the average American who, by the way, would be footing the bill for Kyoto if we hadn’t pull out of it.

Every single one of those actors at the Oscars last night who was applauding Al Gore and nodding his or her head in agreement when Gore said global warming is a moral issue not a political one, needs to take lessons on how to be eco-friendly from President Bush. Next time liberals smugly announce that they drive Priuses, laugh in their faces.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Gore.

This has been my major beef with the environmental hysteria; MOST of the people doing the loudest yelling are leaving the biggest “environmental footprints.” And, that bit about buying purchasing carbon offsets is the biggest pile of crapola I’ve ever heard. If we are in a state of emergency (as they claim), you shouldn’t be able to buy your way out of the mess. THAT is elitism.

Another funny bit I read yesterday (I forget where) was in regards to the ECO-friendly cars everyone rode to the Oscar’s on Sunday. It was said that in Hollywood, everyone’s fourth car is a Prius. Of course, you’d have to be a Hollywood star to own one of those babies: the Tesla Roadster’s they rode in on have a price tag of $92,000.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards. Thumbs down. Publishers Weekly review:

Edwards’s assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father’s disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter’s handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul’s twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David’s deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters’ lives, and Phoebe’s absence corrodes her birth family’s core over the course of the next 25 years. David’s undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents’ icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well. Though the impact of Phoebe’s loss makes sense, Edwards’s redundant handling of the trope robs it of credibility. This neatly structured story is a little too moist with compassion.

Huge sections of this book are BORING. The father is, by far, the most interesting of the characters, and yet he is not offered a bit of sympathy by the author or the other characters in the novel.

And, this is nitpicking, but the anti-American digs toward the end of the book read like the intellectual musings of high school student. I know all writers and artists have total disdain for Americans (and -gasp- American tourists), but such things are becoming a bit cliche. They were actually so out of place (merely comments by the characters that had nothing to do with the story or action), that they must viewed as nothing more than the editorial comment of the author.

You’ll see I added a few more links … trying to continue the process of moving from there to here.

I didn’t get much posted last week. And, I don’t know how much better things will be this week. I have:

Curtains to sew. A “job” I sorta picked up. I have no idea how much to charge for this task. Any ideas? The couple had started to make some curtains (valances) – and had cut and done finishing stitches along the edges. Unfortunately, to finish them (they want that edging stuff) I have to rip out ALL those finishing stitches. Arg.

A wedding. My brother is getting married. In MINNESOTA. What’s the temperature there? Ten below or so? I’m leaving on Thursday.

Kel just pointed out my total thoughtlessness. Here I was blogging about books and the deficit and global warming … and never ONCE did I mention Anna Nicole Smith.

I’d say that it’s just another normal day for our left-biaed media. US Tax Revenues Up 9.7% through four months, Deficit Down 57%; US Media Outlets Mostly Ignore the News:

There is a very real possibility that the federal budget will be in a surplus situation when President Bush hands over the keys to the White House in January 2009. Four months ago, I first suggested that it might very well happen. Brian Wesbury now agrees. The Skeptical Optimist has seen this happening for an even longer time. (Update — SkepOp’s latest post [Feb. 13; HT Ironman in comment below] is projecting that the budget is on track for balance in June 2008.)

In another year or two, after Pelosi and friends have been in power for a bit, this would be heralded as a Democratic victory. But not even the densest bulb would believe that a scant month after Pelosi took power she could take credit for such gains. So, the media will be mostly silent on this story. For now.

h/t: Ace

Well, I’m not really going to do much more than mention the books (no reports), but since I’ve been reading a bunch lately (thanks to a HUGE Borders gift certificate I got for Christmas, thankyouverymuchDough), I thought I’d share.

Silas Marner, by George Eliot. One of those “classics” that fell through the cracks of my public school education. My mother mentioned it was a good read, so I picked it up. Inside flap description:

Embittered by a false accusation, disappointed in friendship and love, the weaver Silas Marner retreats into a long twilight life alone with his loom. . . and his gold. Silas hoards a treasure that kills his spirit until fate steals it from him and replaces it with a golden-haired founding child. Where she came from, who her parents were, and who really stole the gold are the secrets that permeate this moving tale of guilt and innocence. A moral allegory of the redemptive power of love, it is also a finely drawn picture of early nineteenth-century England in the days when spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses, and of a simple way of life that was soon to disappear.

It is a good yarn, and even better you can pick up copy for under four bucks. None of that fourteen-bucks-for-a-paperback-crap that fill the shelves everywhere. When did paperback start costing $14????

Speaking of $14-books, we have my next selection, Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I actually bought this book (for $14) a few years ago, but I didn’t finish it for some reason. At Julie’s (Candy Rant) recommendation, I finished it! I don’t know why I didn’t initially finish it, because it is engaging. I’m gonna guess my reading was interrupted by childbirth or something. From the Amazon review:

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (“like the fish”) is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer–the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.

Alice Sebold’s haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where “life is a perpetual yesterday” and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie’s resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her “simplest dreams,” where “there were no teachers…. We never had to go inside except for art class…. The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue.”

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family’s dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book–Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as “like an accident–a beautiful gasoline rainbow.” Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for ever

Well worth the $14, but you can probably get a deal on this book since it’s been out a while. If you’re in my ‘hood, you can borrow it, but I’ll want it back.

Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle:A Novel was actually fifteen bucks. Is it worth a dollar more than the others? I don’t know. But, it was a quick-weekend read. Another Amazon review:

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle is a metaphorical journey through Dante’s Inferno, told through the eyes of a small Maine family whose hidden demons haunt every aspect of their seemingly peaceful existence. Woven throughout the novel are a series of dramatic illustrations that pay homage to the family’s patriarch (comic book artist Daniel Stone), and add a unique twist to this gripping, yet somewhat rhetorical tale.

Trixie Stone is an imaginative, perceptive 14 year old whose life begins to unravel when Jason Underhill, Bethel High’s star hockey player, breaks up with her, leaving a void that can only be filled by the blood spilled during shameful self-mutilations in the girls’ bathroom. While Trixie’s dad Daniel notices his daughter’s recent change in demeanor, he turns a blind eye, just as he does to the obvious affair his wife Laura, a college professor, is barely trying to conceal. When Trixie gets raped at a friend’s party, Daniel and Laura are forced to deal not only with the consequences of their daughter’s physical and emotional trauma, but with their own transgressions as well. For Daniel, that means reflecting on a childhood spent as the only white kid in a native Alaskan village, where isolation and loneliness turned him into a recluse, only to be born again after falling in love with his wife. Laura, who blames her family’s unraveling on her selfish affair, must decide how to reconcile her personal desires with her loved ones’ needs.

The Tenth Circle is chock full of symbolism and allegory that at times can seem oppresive. Still, Picoult’s fans will welcome this skillfully told story of betrayal and its many negative, and positive consequences.

Honestly, I don’t know if it’s worth $15, but if you can borrow, or get a deal on it- go for it. The story won’t stay with me long, but it was a pleasant diversion for a weekend.

The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury, is one of those standard paperbacks. Not $14, but “only” $9.99. From “Publishers Weekly”:

The war between the Catholic Church and the Gnostic insurgency drags on in this ponderous Da Vinci Code knockoff. The latest skirmish erupts when horsemen dressed as knights raid New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, lopping off heads and firing Uzis as they go. Their trail leads FBI agent Sean Ryan and fetching archeologist Tess Chaykin to the medieval crusading order of the Knights Templars. Anachronistic Gnostic champions of feminism and tolerance against Roman hierarchy and obscurantism, the Templars, they learn, discovered proof that Catholic dogma is a “hoax” and were planning to use it to unite all religions under a rationalist creed that would usher in world peace. Screenwriter and first-time novelist Khoury spices up the doctrinal revisionism with Da Vinci–style thriller flourishes, including secret codes, gratuitous but workmanlike action scenes and a priest–hit man sent out by the Vatican to kill anyone who knows anything. The narrative pauses periodically for believers-vs.-agnostics debates and tutorials on everything from the Gospel of Thomas to alchemy. Though long-winded and sophomoric, these seminars are a relief from Tess and Sean’s tedious romance, which proceeds from awkward flirtations as they listen to Sean’s mix CD to hackneyed intimacies about childhood traumas. The novel’s religious history is as dubious as its conspiracy plot, but anti-clericalists—and Catholics taking a break from the church’s real headaches—could unwind with it.

I stopped reading this book when it was revealed that the motiving force behind one of the characters was the death of his wife during childbirth, who had been advised by doctors to abort due to preclampsia, but on the advice of a priest had carried the child to term. Those evil Catholic priests, they just want women to DIE. I would have thrown the book across the room, for good measure, but my husband was asleep. If anyone would like this book, email me your address.

I enjoyed Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner very much. Amazon review:

In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country’s political turmoil–in this case, Afghanistan–while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. (“…I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”)

Some of the plot’s turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America’s collective consciousness (“people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz”), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon.

Very engaging, despite the implausible aspects of the story. A keeper.

I have a few more books yet to read, so I’ll put them up when I’m done.