Month: November 2013

More Crap from Common Core

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Remember how you learned the use of possessive nouns, like “mine” and “yours” and “Bozo’s,” when you were in school?

Well, here’s a lesson on how to use possessive nouns. The lesson is part of the glorious educational extravaganza of Common Core–that is, lesson content provided by the federal government. (Source: http://weaselzippers.us/2013/10/31/more-common-core-indoctrination-the-people-must-obey-the-governments-commands/ )

Ready? Good. Rewrite these sentences using possessive nouns.

The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.

(Answer: The government’s commands must be obeyed by all.)

The wants of an individual are less important that the well-being of the nation.

(Answer: The individual’s wants are less important that the nation’s well-being.)

Can you imagine George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Patrick Henry writing this bilge? Can you imagine them even having to read it?

Yes, folks, keep on sending your children to those wonderful public schools. “Send us a human being, and we’ll send you back a robot”–National Education Association motto.

Generous Cheapskates

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

This week the good people of New Jersey voted to automatically increase the minimum wage every year.

Now, why did they do this? Don’t they know that when the minimum wage is high, minimum wage jobs become scarce? It’s a fact: minimum wage increases depress the job market. Were Jersey voters trying to do that on purpose?

No–the explanation’s simpler than that.

The voters simply couldn’t resist the temptation to do something that seemed to be generous and which, if they did it, would make them feel good about themselves. “I am generous! What a nice guy I am–I raised the minimum wage!” Nothing makes an American feel more self-righteous than to give away something that he doesn’t own and which he thinks costs him nothing.

What happens after 20 years or so of automatic minimum wage increases? Hmmm… gonna be kinda high, ain’t it? I mean, would you pay some teenager $30 an hour to pick up litter from your parking lot? And if the minimum wage is that high, then “standard” wages will be even higher–to say nothing of a “good” wage.

Either our money will be so debased by then that $30 an hour won’t be enough to live on, or wages in New Jersey will be so high that no one will be able to afford to hire anybody to do anything.

But it’s nice to be generous.

What’s in a Dream?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I’ve been kind of stressed out lately, for reasons which I won’t go into here; and it’s been getting into my sleep.

Last night I dreamed I was lying in my bed–don’t you hate dreams that start like that?–when I heard a woman’s voice downstairs calling, “Jean? Jean? Jean!” It woke me right up, convinced that it was real, listening intently for more. But then I realized that, if there really was someone down there, my cats would be up in the bedroom, freaking out: therefore it was only a dream.

But what sense did it make? I don’t know anyone named Jean. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a Jean in my life, in any capacity. So who the heck is Jean, and who the heck was looking for her in my living room?

It strikes me as the kind of thing Agatha Christie or Margaret Millar could have written into one corker of a story. In fact, Millar’s award-winning novel, A Stranger in My Grave, grew out of a spooky and apparently senseless dream she had.

But me, I just feel mighty tired this morning.

 

To Be Raptured, or Not to be Raptured

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

One of my chess buddies has been chiding me about the Rapture. If you don’t believe in the Rapture, he says, you won’t get raptured when the Rapture comes. I don’t understand this. You’d think, if it was in the Bible, all churches would have taught this doctrine: and it wouldn’t have taken theologians 1,800 years to discover it.

My wife explained for me.

“It’s like Monopoly,” she said. “Look at all the people who put money under Free Parking, and it’s yours if you land on it–but that’s not in the printed rules. If they do that with something simple like Monopoly, imagine what they can get up to with Christianity.”

I’m not here to say anyone is wrong for believing in the Rapture. Maybe I’m wrong for not believing in it. I just can’t find it in the Bible, that’s all.

Anyhow, we’re stuck here till the Rapture comes; and while we’re here, I think we ought to stand and fight, while breath is in us, against what the Heathen are doing to our country and our world. Why should we hide under the church-pews while the ungodly “radically transform” America? They’ll only come for us there in the end, after they’ve done everything else they want to do.

When Moses sent men to spy out the Promised Land, the spies all returned with scary stories about great giants living in walled cities, compared to whom “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.” But one of the spies, Caleb, said, “Let us go up at once and possess [the land], for we are well able to overcome it.” (Numbers 13: 33 and 30)

I’m not here to wait for the Rapture. I’m here to fight.

More Global Warming Mischief

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

While everyone was occupied with the boiling disaster that is Obamacare, the Worst President Ever issued yet another executive order on Friday, Nov. 1. This peach is entitled, “Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change.”

And the way we do that, boys and girls, is… can you guess?… to give the federal government more power! Because if the schmendricks in Washington get enough power, they’ll control the weather and protect us from Global Warming. (See the report from GOP USA, Nov. 4, on Free Republic.)

They will Save the Planet by setting up a special “climate change task force” of progs and ninnies, and by giving the federal government more control of land use and resource policies. By “federal government” they mean the President, especially.

Seeing the terrific job they’re doing, controlling health care, we don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to control the weather, too.

Can you imagine the “climate policy” equivalent of Obamacare?

They should’ve run this out for Halloween! It would’ve given everybody a damned good scare.

 

Google Ads Embarrass Columnist

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Once a week, I have a column in News With Views ( http://www.newswithviews.com ). Last week, I wrote about “church leaders” fleeing from the culture war.

I heard from a couple of readers who wondered if I was quite all there: not because of anything I said, but because of an ad that ran on the same page. It featured a semi-nude woman posed seductively to invite “male gamers” into some kind of imaginary orgy. Hubba-hubba, etc. One reader wanted to know what I thought I was doing, having an ad like that to go along with my column. He said it looked like I was pushing soft-core pornography.

Who, me? I have absolutely nothing to do with whatever ads appear on my page. I passed my readers’ objections on to the editor-in-chief, who soon discovered what had happened.

The ads were put there by Google. ‘Nuff said. This has happened to me before, and to many other writers. You write a column opposing the same-sex parody of marriage, and right up next to it, Google drops an ad for a “gay dating” service.

I am convinced Google does this on purpose, to make the writer look like a hypocrite or, at best, an ass. There’s no reason why the ordinary reader should know how a particular ad winds up on a particular page. So a lot of these readers wind up blaming it on the poor, innocent writer. And the reds at Google score another point against conservatives.

So, in case you’ve ever wondered why an ad for a dominatrix appears next to a column objecting to aberrant sexual lifestyles, remember–the writer didn’t put it there. And on most websites, neither did the editor.

Google did it… to mess with your mind.

 

‘City of Boneheads’ (a Novel for Not Very Bright Teens)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

As someone who writes novels for young people, I try to read as much Young Adult fiction as I can stomach. Occasionally I discover something really good. But not this time.

City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare, was a New York Times best-seller in 2007 and went on to win dozens of awards. I’ve learned that an award from the American Library Assn. usually denotes tacky or unwholesome subject matter.

This particular book embodies most of what’s wrong with YA fiction. Dividing readers into age-group classes is a dumb idea. We don’t have Old Adults or Middle-Aged Adults fiction, or Doddering Adults With One Foot in the Grave Already fiction. Why set up a literary bantustan for younger readers?

(But didn’t you just say you write “novels for young people”? Yeah, I do–in the sense that I don’t presuppose the reader knows or cares about certain matters that only seem to become important after one has passed the age of 50. I also leave out profanity, graphic violence, and sex scenes. The reality is that my publisher disapproves of such things in a novel. I have learned to live without them, and my books are much the better for it. I strive to write material that any reasonably intelligent person from 12 years old and up can enjoy.)

Cassandra Clare is not an awful writer. She knows how to set a scene and how to keep the story flowing. But she writes down to her audience, as if readers under the age of 21 just aren’t able to think outside a narrow “teen culture” box–a little coffin for the brain. Her dialogue is dreadful–what you might expect a clever extraterrestrial to write after spending some decades monitoring MacDonald’s commercials. It would be a better book if the characters never spoke. She even succumbs to the temptation to make her rigidly teenage protagonists superheroes with cool powers. I hate superheroes with cool powers. And there’s a lot of technicolor violence.

After some 200 pages of it, I doubt I’ll have the patience to read all the way to the end of this 500-page monstrosity.

And I can’t think of any reason why you should, either.

Hey, Teens–Clue Me In

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I am one of those adults who write Young Adults fiction. Note that none of it is actually written by young adults.

Because this is where I park my pen, I try to read a lot of contemporary YA fiction to see what the standards are, these days. It ain’t lookin’ good.

The oldsters who write books for teenagers seem to think “young adults” need a steady diet of gore, cruelty, aberrant sex, and really corny dialogue that will be unreadable, a generation down the road. Most of them write with a certain image of “teen culture” in their minds, and imprison their characters and their readers in it from cover to cover. I know I wouldn’t have liked these books when I was 16.

Here is my shout-out to young readers. If you have teenagers in your house, ask them to respond. I need to hear from them.

Do you folks really like Young Adults fiction, as it is today? Do these books speak to you? Do they create a world in which you want to spend a lot of time? Do the old crocks who write them really understand young people? What does it do for you, to read about persons having sex with vampires–dead bodies, you know–or other kinds of monsters?

I ask because I write books which I hope young readers will enjoy and find edifying, (Sly hint: they make great Christmas presents) without being soppy or patronizing. I can see that mine are very different from most of what’s out there–especially from most of the fantasy, which constitutes a big chunk of the teen market.

Having been young once, I have this notion that I’m still much the same person I was then, and that there isn’t that much difference between “young” and “old”–aside from what is emphasized as a marketing ploy.

Tell me if I’m wrong.