Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC rips Paris report

Testing, testing. Testing my ability to add a video directly to my blog.
How fancy am I?

Mika Brzezinski is my hero

I never heard of her before today, but if you haven't seen this clip of Mika Brzezinski refusing to report entertainment gossip as news, you should watch it. The whole thing. It's only about 3 minutes long, although the clock in the bottom right-hand corner shows that this took place over several hours. This woman deserves a Pulitzer Prize or something!

Mika Takes a Stand

Green Snakes, and Brown Snakes, and Possums, Oh MY

This morning I went out to put the grill cover back on the grill (yummy fajitas last night, but that's a different post altogether) and I saw a sweet green grass snake sunning itself on my fence. I saw sweet, because compared the the giant rat snake from a month or so ago, this guy was a kitten. And then I gathered up all my courage (because even though I know little green snakes are harmless, they all give me the heebie jeebies) and I decided to continue on my mission. So, I lifted up the grill cover and what was underneath it, but ANOTHER snake. This one, I can tell you with some confidence, was a baby rat snake. Whether it's the offspring of our friend the gigatic monster rat snake, I can't say, but it was small. And get this. I took a deep breath, shook myself off, and continued with the job at hand. Albeit with one eye constantly roving between the two snakes.

So, then, proud of myself for doing what needed to be done in the face of adversity, I rewarded myself with a tour around my yard to inspect the bird feeders and see what was blooming, what needed pruning, etc. And what did I find, lying DEAD under my peanut feeder, but a young (did I mention dead?) opossum---with ants crawling out of its eye sockets, nostrills, and mouth.

Blech.

All of which begs the question: why the hell can't my husband put the grill cover back on the grill when he's done? This is really ALL his fault.

I need a drink!

Another in the series of amusing quotes from my delicate six-year-old daughter

Mia (face red with effort): Pfffjfffffhhhhhttttthhhhhh.
Jenny (concerned): Gosh, Mia. Do you need to poop?
Mia (casually): Nope. It was just a toot. It was a good one, though. Kind of relaxing. Like Yoga.

My Crappy Day

Lots of crappy stuff happened today. Nothing major, but little, niggly, crappy stuff. I sent Jenny and the girls to the neighborhood pool so I could work this morning. They showed up at the door 10 minutes after they left because the pool was closed because of some strange chemical imbalance. Mia took it as a personal affront and spent the next several hours moaning about how it wasn't fair. Well, most of the next several hours. She spent some of that time fighting with her sister and some of that time crying because I didn't plan the right lunch.

I'm tired. I need a vacation from summer vacation. And we're only in week 2. . .

Pleh.

And then there was the news that my beautiful and beloved personal trainer has been promoted and is leaving my gym to become the fitness manager at another location. He told me today, and I swear to you, it was all I could do not to cry. How pathetic is that? I really like the guy he's set me up with, and change is good, and blah, blah, blah. But I'm really, really, really going to miss Russell. Not to mention his fine, fine ass.

Sigh.

My favorite image of the week

I read a blog called b.rox by a guy who lives in Mid-City New Orleans. The writer, a guy named Bart, has become a somewhat reluctant community leader in post-Katrina New Orleans. He works at a university in NO and his wife is a public school teacher. They live in a predominately minority area, and they're trying to stay there. But few of their neighbors returned after the storm, and the neighborhood, as I understand it, is still in pretty bad shape.

His entries are sometimes funny, sometimes painful, but always insightful. It's been a rough couple of years for Bart, but it's people like him who are keeping New Orleans alive.

That was a long introduction to the following excerpt from his 5/31 entry:

On our side of the street, two teenage boys are lounging atop a car. They’re acting all thuggish and hard, as teenage boys are wont to do, but they’re playing Connect Four. That cracks me up.

I just love this. This is what New Orleans means to me. It is a city of such dichotomy that it's hard to get your head around it sometimes. But the mental image of two tough thugs on top of a car playing a kids' game is going to stick with me for a long time.

Sensitive Issues

If you're reading this, you probably know what I do for a living. And many of you do the same thing. While I wouldn't say it's a passion, creating educational materials (that's mainly textbooks and testing materials, for those of you not up on the industry jargon) is definitely a good gig that allows me a great deal of flexibility--and the money's not bad, either. Every once in a while I get to work on a project that I believe is really effective and meaningful, but for the most part, most of the big publishers are producing the same mediocre stuff under different titles. As they try to maximize profits by meeting the needs of a huge audience, they often miss the mark completely.

One of the big issues in educational publishing is "sensitivity." It's been an issue as long as I've been in the business. For a long time now certain topics have been off limits. Obviously, you can't write stories about sex and violence. You can't write about religious holidays or Halloween because someone might be offended. Minorities and the elderly must be shown in a positive light--they can't be depicted as criminal or feeble, respectively. Children on bikes must always wear helmets and people in cars must have on their seat belts. Physical handicaps must be depicted with regularity, but, for the most part, the handicap must not be an issue. Fictional characters must represent people from a variety of ethnic and social groups. Magic and magical creatures are completely off limits, as are witches, ghosts, demons, and vampires; although, strangely, trolls and goblins are okey dokey.

There are some sensitivity issues that might surprise you. Children must not be depicted playing cards or using dice as a part of a board game--because cards and dice can be used in gambling. In math activities, children may use number cubes, but you may never ever call them dice. Children shouldn't be depicted consuming foods of little nutritional value, such as ice cream, candy, or chips. And they definitely shouldn't drink cola. Many publishers try to stay away from anthropomorphism although some will allow talking animals in stories for Kindergarten and first grade.

Again, these are issues I've been aware of for a long time; they're part of the educational publishing culture, so to speak, and they don't surprise me any more. At least they didn't surprise me until I received a document from a client today that left me almost speechless. In addition to the things I've mentioned above, and a bevy of other similar issues, the following are off limits:
* References to animals mating (Hmmm. That's going to make teaching life sciences a little tricky, but I'm not working on science right now, so okay. I resolve to avoid writing about mating animals!)
* People throwing up (Frankly, this doesn't come up much in the materials I've worked on, but still, this one surprised me. Does some group have religious objections to throwing up? Is it political? I don't get it!)
* Embarrassing words, such as "breast," "brassiere," and (I'm not making this up) "toilet" (What the hell?)
* Physical unattractiveness (such as obesity) as the focus of a selection if the issue is not resolved positively
* Men wearing earrings
* Biographies about people shown to have led less than exemplary lives (Whom does that leave, exactly?) or about living people who may not continue to lead exemplary lives (I'd pull out my crystal ball for that one, but I'm pretty sure crystal balls are off limits, too.)

But here's my absolute favorite "sensitive issue" from the new list:
* Classification of people as animals (e.g., "People, like other animals, need food to live.")
Seriously? How can this be a "sensitive issue"? People *are* animals. Where's the controversy?

These things make me insane. I completely understand that in order to stay in business, educational publishers have to sell textbooks. And in order to sell textbooks, publishers have to make sure they're not pissing anyone off. But when we get to the point that we're avoiding actual basic facts, like the fact that people are animals, in mass market products, I don't really see the point.