Monthly Archives: January 2013

Jan17

“Truthers” Prove Einstein Correct

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tinfoil hatAlbert Einstein famously said, “Only two things are infinite, the Universe and Human Stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” The group of “people” known as Homo sapiens veritas are the best proof Einstein was correct in his assessment of the endlessness of human stupidity.

Homo sapiens veritas, better known by their common name — Truthers — are some of the most irritating, far-fetched, and unfortunately downright dangerous people you will ever come across. They share several common characteristics. First of all, the majority of Truthers are white and predominantly male. This is not an absolute because some minorities manage to get sucked in to the Truther vortex and enough females wander in to the orbit of these people to ensure future generations of the herd. The one thing setting Truthers apart from all other members of society, however, is their near religious zeal to prove nearly every event in world history is either an out-and-out hoax or a sinister conspiracy out of the shadows.

Allow me to give you just a sample of what these people believe, write books about, create websites for, and hold conventions expounding. I will offer no explanation of their beliefs and when you read the list, I think you’ll understand why.

    • The Holocaust was fabricated by Zionist Jews to drum up support for a Jewish state, Israel.
    • FDR knew all about the impending Pearl Harbor attack and ordered the information buried in order to ensure America would enter the Second World War.
    • JFK was assassinated by shooters on the “Grassy Knoll” or snipers placed elsewhere, but under NO circumstances did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone. (“Up and to the left; up and to the left; up and to the left”)
    • The United States government orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11-2001 to justify a war with Iraq and Afghanistan.
    • Barak Obama is not a U.S. citizen, has a fake Social Security Number, and IS a Muslim.
    • Contrails formed behind jet airplanes at high altitudes are actually chemical clouds of an unknown origin and substance being released by our government for an unknown, but nefarious purpose.
    • Global warming caused by mankind’s actions is a fabrication to get more money earmarked for scientists.
    • The Apollo moon landings were all faked and filmed in the basement of the Pentagon.

These and many other ideas come from people who believe them enough to die for them in some cases. Now, though, a new and horrible conspiracy theory has started spreading with the attack once again being led by “Truthers” and this one is truly heart-wrenching. Truthers are spreading the notion that the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre was not the work of the mentally ill and well-armed Adam Lanza, but instead was carried out by a group working for the Federal government. They claim OUR government is so insidious that politicians had 26 innocent people — including 20 FIRST GRADE CHILDREN — basically executed.

Why?

As an excuse for tightening gun control.

I’d laugh if the notion wasn’t so unGodly perverted. A sizable group of people in this country are so enamored with their guns and so against ANY type of gun control that they have resorted to spreading conspiracy theories surrounding this school shooting, as well as the Aurora, CO theater shooting, in order to cast doubt on our government and save their precious guns.

That is what America has come to. Guns are more important than children.

Folks, I like guns. I LOVE guns. I enjoy shooting any type of gun I can at a range or in a field. I don’t hunt because I cannot kill an animal if my life depended on it. I just don’t have the nerve. My daddy and brother are hunters. Many of my best friends are hunters or gun lovers. I think guns are cool and if I could afford more, I’d buy a few more.

But children are more important than guns.challenge_accepted

It gets worse. The things I’ve been reading in the “comments” section of ANY article REMOTELY touching on gun control would be hysterical if these people weren’t dead serious. Several people have stated they need to hold on to as many guns as possible so . . . get this . . . THEY CAN OVERTHROW A TYRANNICAL US GOVERNMENT! These people actually think in the very near future the “gubmint” is going to go door to door and confiscate every firearm in private hands.

First of all, that’s never going to happen. Second of all, IF on the uber-miniscule chance that it did, when the Feds come to get the guns, the Feds are going. To. Get. The. Guns. To all you wannabe battle hungry folks who say “they’ll take my gun when they pry it from my cold dead hands”, the US government has one thing to say — “Challenge Accepted.”

You see, all my NRA worshiping Sparkies out there, contrary to what you may think, you are not modern-day Minutemen or throwbacks to the patriots who fought the British to win our country’s independence. Our government isn’t 1776 Britain either. That was a simple war — they had muskets; we had muskets and a few rifles. Guts and determination and some timely help from France and Spain were all we needed.

Today, private citizens have rifles, pistols, and shotguns and the US government has rifles, pistols, and shotguns . . . and tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, artillery, jets, rockets, and more toys than even Santa and all his elves could put together. A friend of mine told me “The government would never use tanks against American citizens.” I told him what I’m telling you now — if things have gone far enough down the crapper that the government has declared martial law and feels the need to confiscate all privately owned guns, they’ve gone far enough down the crapper for troops to use whatever they need to use to do that, ala V for Vendetta style.

Let me wrap up by saying this; I don’t like the way our country is headed, but it’s still the best in the world. I don’t like everything our politicians do, but I think they fall into two basic groups — the ones in it for the money and perks and the ones who want to do good but don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anything done. I don’t think any of them CARE enough to want to set up some crazy dictatorship.

Maybe someday, but not just yet. We’ve got problems, sure, but our problems aren’t so awful we need to place guns above the value of people.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Jan11

As The Book Is Banned, A Cautionary Tale

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NeonomiconBannedI haven’t written a librarian post in quite some time, mainly because I haven’t been an official librarian in several years now. However, I remain a librarian at heart and just because I’m not working in a library, I haven’t turned a blind eye to the library world and the eye of the library world is blackened and puffy due to events transpiring right in my home town public library system. A book has been banned in from the Greenville County Public Library System.

The Greenville News has the entire story, but allow me to give you a short precis’. Last year, a fourteen year old girl used her father’s library card to check out Alan Moore’s graphic novel Neonomicon. When she showed the book to her mother, the mother was aghast and appalled at the content so she took the book back to the library and lodged a formal complaint. As per the library’s policy, a materials review committee went over the book using all the various criteria for selection such as literary merit, author reputation, awards, etc. After a thorough and careful review, the committee voted to uphold the book’s inclusion in the library’s collection. Then events took an ominous turn. The director of the library system, one Ms. Beverly James, used her “executive authority” to go against her own policy and OVERRULE HER EMPLOYEE COMMITTEE by ordering the book removed.

Let’s review. ONE person made a complaint about a book. The complaint went through proper protocols and channels. The committee upheld the book’s placement. The library director — a librarian with education and experience — went against their recommendation and BANNED THE BOOK.

A LIBRARIAN BANNED A BOOK!! This wasn’t a city council pressured by picketing pressure groups or a school board acting to quell an imagined scandal. This was a librarian taking a book off the shelves because ONE PARENT COMPLAINED! What’s next? Garbage-men pouring trash into the streets? Plumbers causing leaks in pipes? Congress passing meaningful legislation?

In the interest of full disclosure, Neonomicon is a harsh book. Alan Moore wrote it as a commentary on the horror genre and how it is racist and misogynistic. Since it is a graphic novel, it has pictures and some of the pictures show an orgy and later a rape scene. Did I mention it was a horror book? I can understand a parent not wanting his or her child to read this book. I get that, but that’s the issue.

This is Ms. Beverly James. She ordered a book banned after her materials review committee upheld it.

This is Ms. Beverly James, Director of the Greenville County Library System. She ordered a book banned after her materials review committee upheld it.

If you are a parent, you have EVERY right in the world to monitor your child or teen’s reading habits. You have the right to order YOUR child not to read something. You have the right to impose your views on morality on your children. I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a tremendous problem with is when YOU try to impose YOUR views on MY child and — regardless of how you want to sugar coat it — that is what censorship is, one person or one group of people imposing THEIR views on others by denying others the opportunity to books, movies, etc which the others have a First Amendment right to see and read.

Simply put, NO parent has the right to RAISE ANOTHER PARENT’S CHILDREN, but that is exactly what this ONE woman has done. She has, with the complicity of the HEAD LIBRARIAN of our county system, told EVERY teenager in this county “You cannot read this book because I don’t like it.”

I find that appalling.

Someone in the comments section of the article tried to defend Ms. James by saying she was acting in the interest of the prevailing views of the community and THAT is where another serious problem crops up. Librarians are PUBLIC servants. They act as agents of the state / city. As agents of the state, librarians are responsible for acting in the interest of the ENTIRE COMMUNITY, not just those who hold power or majority views. A librarian does not and should not have the luxury of allowing his or her personal views to taint his or her service to the community served. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Is it just me or is the resemblance amazingly uncanny?

Is it just me or is the resemblance amazingly uncanny?

A friend of mine is a librarian in a high school in the upstate. She has a good selection of LGBT young adult novels as well as reference books and other non-fiction books that address LGBT topics. She put this collection together because her school has a growing number of students who identify as LGBT and she wants THEM to have a place and voice in the library even though she personally doesn’t support the LGBT lifestyle because it runs counter to her beliefs as an Evangelical Christian. She is and has always been VERY conservative but she realizes something lots of people don’t — she is an agent of the state from the time she gets out of her car on campus until she gets back in to leave.

She gets a lot of heat from people, including people in her own family for having such a liberal selection policy, but I applaud her because she realizes something too many Christians, especially in the South in general and the communities here in the Buckle of the Bible Belt do not — THE MORALITY OF HER STUDENTS IS THEIR PARENTS” RESPONSIBILITY, NOT HERS. Her job is to serve the school community as a whole, not promote any agenda.

Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t or won’t see the bigger picture. I support freedom to read, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state NOT because I am not a Christian, but because I am and I’ve realized something — our majority is slipping. Islam is growing in America by leaps and bounds. Latin American Catholicism, which has some unsettling differences from the run of the mill Catholic churches around here, is growing with the growing influx of Latinos — legal and illegal. What happens when W.A.S.P.s are no longer in control? It’s something to think about and think about carefully. Sure, you probably support prayer in schools, but what happens when the class president or valedictorian is a Muslim and wants to pray in Allah’s name instead of Jesus’? When that day comes, and it WILL come, many Christians will be wishing they had listened to Thomas Jefferson’s message to the Danbury Baptist Association much more carefully.

So what does that have to do with the book banning? Everything. To boil it down, if WE insist on banning THEIR books today because we can, what do we say when the shoe is on the other foot and they want to ban OUR books? Think about this before I go; the woman who started the ball rolling which ended in Neonomicon being banned cited the book’s graphic depiction of violence and nudity as her reasons for wanting the book off the shelves. As an amateur theologian who has read the book cover to cover many times, I can tell you this — if graphic depiction of violence and misogyny were grounds for banning a book, the Old Testament of the Holy Bible wouldn’t  last a week.

Love you all, and I hope this makes it to the computers of some of my former colleagues so they can spread the alarm around the state and around the country. Now, keep those feet clean AND dry and I’ll catch you next time.

Jan3

Happy Birthday, Beren!

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jrr-tolkienJ.R.R. Tolkien would be 121 — “twelvity-one” in hobbit-speak — today were he still with us in body. I say “in body” because any person moderately interested in the fantasy genre knows full well just how omnipresent Mr. Tolkien is in spirit and influence. I am not, however, of the faction who feel Tolkien created the world of high fantasy. Certainly Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and Arthur Conan Doyle — to name a few — blazed part of that trail before Bilbo set off on his most unBaggins-like, unhobbitish  journey.

Tolkien, though, picked up their trail and turned it into a superhighway traveled by the “usual suspects” of fairy tales like shape-shifters, dragons, and elves — though Tolkien’s elves wouldn’t have been recognizable to the Grimm brothers, but also by new wayfarers like orcs, wargs, and — of course — hobbits. I can’t say much that isn’t already written in the multitude of volumes in libraries today extolling Tolkien’s works and cutting into the minutiae of Middle Earth. I have nothing in my poor hack writing to add to them. What they cannot do, however, is tell what Tolkien, hobbits, and Middle Earth meant and still mean to me.

I read The Hobbit for the first time thirty years ago when I was a fat, awkward kid in sixth grade. The library at Gray Court – Owings School was a welcome refuge for me since I was nonathletic, unaesthetic, and borderline neurotic. One October afternoon, I had just finished off the last book in the World War II section of non-fiction when Ms. Goodhue, the finest school librarian to ever hold the title, sat me down and asked if I’d ever read any fantasy. I could honestly reply in the negative because I wasn’t really sure what fantasy even was. Without fanfare, she went to the paperback section of the “big kids” side of the library (supposedly for 7 – 8 graders) and brought back The Hobbit. She told me to try the first few chapters and let her know if I liked it.

Much to the chagrin of my 3-6 period teachers AND my grandmother, I read the entire book before bedtime that night, stopping only to take a spelling test and eat supper.

Grave_2

Just in case you’re wondering who in the world is Beren and why is he in the title of a post about Tolkien.

The next day, Ms. Goodhue took my glowing report of how much I loved the book then reached into her book bag and pulled out HER PERSONAL COPY of The Fellowship of the Ring for me to borrow. I read it — and The Two Towers and The Return of the King — by the end of the week. That Saturday, I went to the now-long-defunct Waldenbooks in the now razed-to-the-ground Greenville Mall and bought a matched set of all four books with my entire piggy bank . . . and a little “advance” from Papa Wham. To this day, they sit in an honored place on my office bookshelf. I’ve read and reread those four books AT LEAST sixteen times cover-to-cover in the intervening years. In fact, that set is so precious to me, it nearly caused my beloved Budge and I to “have words.” The movies were due out and she wanted to read the books beforehand so she asked me if she could read MY set. Having seen how she was prone to treat other paperback books she read — crushing their spines and bending pages — I flat-out told her NO to her (and my) utter shock. In my defense, we’d only been married about four years and I did not possess the wisdom and knowledge a husband of more years would have displayed. I immediately recanted and told her she could, but as every woman reading this knows, I couldn’t have PAID her to TOUCH “those books of mine” so I took her to dinner RIGHT THEN and we bought her very own set — which I have not touched to this day.

That incident is just a taste of how The Lord of the Rings has been a thread through my last three decades. I think the major reason is I discovered the books at a time when I was in profound need of seeing someone small and insignificant use wits . . . and a bit of Tookish luck . . . to overcome tons of negative stuff being hurled at him. Even though it had been five years since my parents’ divorce, I was still unable to process why my mother and father were not together. To top things off, Daddy had remarried and so had Mama and now Mama was realizing exactly what the wise aphorism “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” really meant. In short, I was at a time of overwhelming mental and emotional turmoil. Tolkien gave me a place to go. When I was in Middle Earth, I was aware of the dangers, but they were dangers I could face on equal terms with sword and steel instead of lying helpless before words and people more cruel than any orc. Middle Earth was my refuge at a time when I desperately need one and it has sheltered me from many more woes and foes this world has offered.

So thank you, Professor, for turning the horror of WWI’s trenches into a world where a little boy could escape, if but for a little while and join a heroic quest to a Lonely Mountain because, as writer G.K. Chesterton so eloquently stated, ““Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

Love you all and hope the new year is off to a great start! Keep those feet clean.