Don't show your ass on Facebook

As of this writing, I have 223 friends on Facebook. Not a huge number when compared to some of my friends, but a manageable number. My newsfeed is varied and interesting, and even on my busiest days, I can easily scroll through and see what’s going on with everyone. I access FB almost exclusively through my phone, so I can check it anytime I have a few extra minutes. I have a Twitter account, a blog, and I read other blogs daily, a select few religiously, but FB is the social media form I touch most.

I scrolled through my list of friends and broke it down based on how I knew them. Some friends fell into multiple categories, so I placed them in the one where I knew them first.

Family members – 13
Friends from high school – 31
Friends from college – 13
Friends I met thru work – 62
Friends I met in my capacity as a football coach’s wife – 26
Friends I met thru my kids – 22
Former students – 36
Friends I met thru Jazzercise – 8
Friends who don’t fall into any of the above categories – 12

My friends fall all over the spectrum politically, religiously, socially, and culturally. My friends are old and young, male and female, black and white, gay and straight. They are in college, established professionals, stay-at-home moms, in the military, working odd jobs trying to find their way in life, and retired.

One of my favorite things about FB is the diversity of my friends. I love that I never know what I’m gonna see. One friend’s baby pic might be followed in my newsfeed by a pic of the margarita someone else is about to drink. An inspirational quote might be followed by a rant on the rudeness of people in traffic. Last fall, a status praising the example of Tim Tebow was immediately followed by a status mocking the example of Tim Tebow.

I rarely get bent over anyone’s political or religious views because I was raised to respect divergent points of view. I teach my own kids and my students to respect divergent points of view. I don’t choose my friends based on their political or religious points of view, but rather on the content of their character.

Unfortunately, nothing reveals the content of a person’s character like politics and religion. Most people are able to express a point of view reasonably, without shouting and vitriol. I know this doesn’t seem true based on what the media shows us daily, but think about your personal experience. Do your friends and co-workers rant like assholes on a regular basis? Mine don’t. But here’s the thing. Even a rant can be accomplished without showing your ass. I understand that sometimes, people feel so passionate about something or so disgusted by something that they need to rant. I get that. I really do.

The rant is by definition, emotional. You rant because you FEEL. The trick is to feel and convey that feeling without divorcing yourself from your rational brain. Passion is most effective when combined with reason. When passion overtakes reason, there is a significant danger of your ass falling out and revealing itself to everyone within hearing distance.

When your ass falls out on Facebook, “hearing distance” grows exponentially.

I have seen my FB friends’ metaphorical asses from time to time, and I’m aware that once or twice, I’ve shown mine. Mostly, I shake my head or laugh and move on because I realize that it’s coming from a place of exuberant youth, or drunkenness, fear, or loss. I can forgive those things because we’re human, and I’ve been there too.

What I will not forgive is willful ignorance and bigotry.

Last night, I had 224 FB friends. I was watching the NCAA championship and scrolling through the joyful posts of my friends cheering on the Cats. Right in the middle of the celebration was a post that made my jaw drop, a steaming pile of crap in the middle of a banquet table. It was so unexpected and out of place, that at first, I thought it had to be a joke and I somehow wasn’t in on it.

It wasn’t. I won’t repeat the status she posted, but it was ignorant. A mutual friend called her out on it in the comments section, but was drowned out by a chorus of voices who saw that one bigot had showed her ass and were now vying to get their asses front and center as well. My friend texted me and asked me if I thought the post had racist overtones. I said no. There were no overtones. The post was blaring racism through an air horn.

I unfriended her. The friend who texted me said she would unfriend her too as soon as her daughter showed her how. None of the bigots in the comments section who raised their heads like vile little gophers thinking the coast was clear were my FB friends. They never will be.

My former FB friend was not a former student or one of Bruce’s former players. Those young folks have more sense than that. She was not a friend from high school or college that I haven’t seen in ages and have very little in common with anymore. She was someone I thought I knew.

The whole incident made me feel sad and sick and slightly disillusioned. I’m not stupid or naïve. I’m too old for that. I teach public school for heaven’s sake. I guess it’s more that someone in her position would not only espouse such a hateful point of view, but express it publicly and inspire others to join in.

I can’t change the world, although I’d like to think I’m trying to change my own little corner of it for the better. I can absolutely change our friendship status, both on FB and in real life.

This morning I have 223 Facebook friends.

Smart People Rule the World

I had a head-spinning, fly-completely-off-the-rails moment in my classroom yesterday.

Not because students were misbehaving. No...the students in that class are awesome kids. I went berserk because more than half of the students in the class said they don't think of themselves as "smart people." Then, they went further and said they don't want to be labeled as "smart people." It's just not cool.

This from advanced English students...pre-AP kids who jumped through rigorous hoops to be in the class...kids who are reading and discussing Plato's Republic.

Are you kidding me? Are you FREAKING kidding me?

Let me take a few deep breaths and back up.

As I said, we are reading Plato. After each reading assignment, I prepare three or four questions that serve to illuminate the reading and bring the concepts into the 21st century. I lob those questions into my classroom like conversational grenades. These kids are tremendous readers and thinkers, and they lob their responses right back at me. The discussion is always vigorous, and one of my goals is to teach them how to listen to a different point of view and disagree respectfully (a lost art these days).

So yesterday, we reached the section in which Socrates says that philosophers should be kings. The first grenade I tossed out there was this: Should the smartest people in a group or community be the leaders? Turns out that question wasn't a grenade. It was a thermonuclear weapon of mass destruction.

Overwhelmingly, the kids said no, the smartest people shouldn't necessarily be the leaders of any given group or community. I pointed out that a room full of smart people were arguing against smart people being in charge. That's when they started denying being smart.

"Oh, Ms. Owens, there's lots of people smarter than us."

"We're not really that smart."

"I don't think of myself as a smart person."

WTF? My goal of teaching respectful disagreement went out my nonexistent window, and I flipped.

"What do you mean you don't think of yourself as a smart person?"

I heard myself getting loud, and I knew my tone had changed from calm facilitation to righteous indignation.

"It's not cool to be smart."

"Says who!?!"

Shrugs all around. "You know...everybody."

"Oh. Everybody. Of course. Everybody says it."

Yes...now we were firmly in the land of derisive sarcasm.

"I've got news for Everybody. Everybody is going to wake up when he graduates from high school and realize he needs the smart people. Everybody is going to need a smart person when he gets sick. Everybody is going to show up in a smart person's office with his hat in his hands when he needs legal help. Everybody is going to be a slave to the next must-have gadget that a smart person designed. Everybody is going to be punching the clock in a company a smart person runs. Everybody is going to realize that he is just a cog in a big machine that has a smart person at the controls."

I think I might have slammed my copy of Plato on a kid's desk at this point.

"Or even worse...maybe Everybody will never figure it out. Maybe he'll just be an ineffectual, frustrated underachiever who stays stuck in a rut his whole life and never figures out why he's so unhappy. Or he'll find a scapegoat to blame for his stupid choices...the government, his boss, his teachers...and the BEST part...he won't even be cool anymore. Because while Everybody has power in the halls of a high school where he preys on the inherent insecurity of his fellow students, once he graduates, he realizes the smart people have moved on. They are doing important smart people things, and he is nothing more than a dim, unpleasant memory."

A moment of silence descended when I stopped to breathe. I knew my blood pressure was up because I could feel my pulse in my forehead.

The kid sitting right in front of me said, "You really don't like stupid people, do you Ms. Owens?"

The class erupted in laughter, and so did I. The tension was broken, and I was able to answer his question like a reasonable person.

"I have no problem with people who are ignorant because they haven't been taught yet. I'm a teacher. That's what I do. My problem is with people who not only choose to remain ignorant, but who revel in their ignorance...wear it like a badge of honor."

The dumbass has become a staple of American TV and movies. Watch one episode of The Jersey Shore, and you'll believe with certainty we are doomed. Really. Is it any wonder kids think stupid is cool? But I didn't say that to my class.

I told them to be happy they could be counted among the smart people. I told them to believe it and to own it. Philosophers might not be kings, but smart people are captains of industry. The big problems our country faces will be solved by smart people, not pundits, talking heads, or self-serving politicians. Smart people are doing all the work that truly matters.

Like it or not, smart people rule the world.

Speak Loudly

Banned Books Week starts in six days. Read about it here and here.

If you think we live in a world where a celebration of the freedom to read freely is an anachronism...ancient history...a problem long solved, you are sadly mistaken. I've posted about this ad naseum, I know. But censorship just won't die. It keeps raising its ugly head.

Laure Halse Anderson's young adult novel, Speak, has been called "pornography" by a man in Missouri, Wesley Scroggins, who is looking to remove it from classrooms and school libraries.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

For those who haven't read Anderson's novel, it is the story of a girl who is raped in the summer before she enters her freshman year of high school. She spends her freshman year struggling with the physical, psychological, and social aftermath. She struggles to find her voice so she can SPEAK about what happened to her.

Because of the two rape scenes in the book, Scroggins says the book is filthy and immoral. Anderson responded better than I could when she says:

The fact that he sees rape as sexually exciting (pornographic) is disturbing, if not horrifying. It gets worse, if that’s possible, when he goes on to completely mischaracterize the book.

Click here to read Laurie Halse Anderson's entire post on the issue. She includes links for her readers and supporters to speak loudly against Scroggins' efforts.

My students love this book. Anderson writes realistic fiction with which real teenagers identify. (Heck...I identified with it. I know the teachers she creates in this book. I am one of them.) Anderson SPEAKs to teenage readers, especially a certain kind of reluctant reader. Our library almost always has a waiting list for this book, and we have multiple copies. Kids are lining up to read it.

I want to shake people who advocate pulling high-interest books off the shelf. Their political/religious/social agenda is more important than creating a society of readers and thinkers. They are the modern day equivalent of High Inquisitors.

Even worse than the potential loss of a high-interest book is the potential loss of a book that might help a kid who has been raped. Anderson wrote an amazing poem pulled almost entirely from the letters of kids who have read her book. I've pulled the video from her blog. It's powerful, and it demonstrates that books can give kids the courage to SPEAK and to heal.

Overcompensation

Some people just aren't happy unless they're in charge of something. You know the ones I'm talking about...the folks who wear even the smallest bit of authority on their sleeve like they're a five star general. We've all had the misfortune to cross into the kingdoms to which these tyrants hold the keys. The guy at the convenience store who literally holds the key to the restroom...the crossing guard who puts on a dayglo vest and believes herself the newest member of Homeland Security...the bureaucrat whose spiel you must listen to once a year because the law requires it.

Like the man for whom their complex was named, these little Napoleons are clearly overcompensating for something. Maybe their mama didn't love them enough, maybe they have small...feet, or maybe the good Lord just didn't bless them with fabulous hair. Judging by the abundance of hair gel on the asshat I ran into yesterday, I'd say the latter was at least one of his problems.

Hair Gel Dude (HGD) was in charge of reading some information off of a powerpoint, and then testing his captive audience over the information. Yesterday marked the 13th time I have had the information imparted to me (although it was the first time via powerpoint). He presented the powerpoint, looking bored and only leaving his seat when absolutely necessary. Then, he strutted across the room like a smug Ken doll in a too-tight shirt that stank of Dapper Dan or whatever brand of gel gives hair an artfully mussed appearance.

Normally, I would roll my eyes at HGD, suffer through his presentation, take my legally-required test, and go on my merry way. In fact, that is exactly what I tried to do. I was in a hurry because a very nice person was covering another obligation for me until I arrived, so I was trying to be considerate by getting there asap. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of leaving when I was finished with the test instead of waiting for HGD to dismiss me.

HGD slung Dapper Dan all over the room trying to get to the door before I left. Cause see? He hadn't dismissed me yet, and I was being rude and imposing on him by leaving.

Wow. Yeah.

I was so stunned by his nasty tone that I didn't use any of the really awesome and clever comebacks I thought of later. Actually, I probably wouldn't have anyway. In spite of being addressed as if I were a child, I never forgot that I was a professional person in a professional setting. I actually apologized and tried to explain. He wasn't interested in anything but making sure I understood that he was IN CHARGE.

I finally just left. I waited until the door closed and called him something excessively nasty and not clever at all. Only the four walls heard me, so I suppose I retained my dignity.

The thing that bothers me the most about the encounter is that I let it get to me. I stewed about it the rest of the evening. Even Jazzercise didn't help. I looked for fault in myself. Was I rude in the way that I left? I didn't think so, but clearly HGD and I don't perceive reality in the same way, so maybe he thought I was.

I share this story to vent a little and offer it as a cautionary tale. When you meet someone who has obvious compensation issues, remember it's his problem. You can't fix it, and being nice won't get you anywhere. Just put on your professional armor, shake him off like toilet paper stuck to your shoe, and walk away.

Stealing is stealing

Plagiarism is an ugly word. Heck, it even looks ugly, reminiscent of the word, "plague." Like some contagious and dread disease that that bleeds, blackens, bloats, and ultimately negates the host. One would think those images would cause writers to avoid plagiarism like...the plague.

In fact, plagiarism and plague have different etymologies. Plagiarism comes from the Latin plagiarius which means "kidnapper, seducer, plunderer." While plague comes from the Latin plaga which means to "stroke, wound." Both seem appropriate to me.

A plagiarist is a thief, a plunderer of words and ideas.

Analyzing bits of information from various sources, breaking it down, combining your own experiences, synthesizing it all back together in the form of an original idea, and then communicating your new idea coherently in writing is HARD. The process requires time and brain power. You have to work for it.

A sketchy work ethic can get a young writer in trouble. Honestly, a sketchy work ethic probably gets older writers in trouble, but I'm not reading their unpubbed work, so I can't speak to how big a problem it is. I do know of one young college student who lost a $37,000 scholarship to a prestigious university because of plagiarism...so it does get older writers in trouble.

I ran into a particularly blatant bit of plagiarism recently...an entire section of a paper lifted directly from a source that it took me all of two minutes to locate. The student did something like this...type the topic into Google, click on the first link, copy, paste, print, DONE BABY!

Terrible, right? At least, I think it is. The teacher in me thinks it's terrible because that student lost the opportunity to read and think critically. No learning happened, so the assignment was a waste of everyone's time. The experience was an educational failure for that student.

The writer in me thinks it's terrible for an entirely different reason. Somewhere out there, a writer did do some reading and some thinking and subsequently, produced one of those original ideas we were talking about. And then the plagiarist, the thief, the kidnapper, the plunderer of words STOLE it. If you think my idea is brilliant and want to share it as you work your way to your idea....great! Credit me, and we're copacetic.

Explaining to a young writer why plagiarism is wrong is getting more difficult. We live in a world where any work of art can be reduced to bits and bytes and ripped off the Internet and on to your personal computer. And while we pay lip service to stopping it, the genie is out of the bottle, and the only thing stopping illegal downloads is personal integrity. Even that becomes problematic when the downloaders see themselves as having integrity.

Our society does not respect intellectual property. We just don't. I'd like to say it's only the kids downloading music, books, and computer programs without paying for them, but it's not. Adults are just as bad. I was at a friend's house recently where an intelligent, educated guy tried to defend the practice.

Stealing is stealing. You wouldn't defend slipping a book or a CD out of Wal-Mart without paying for it, so how do you defend stealing it electronically? How do you chastise your child for plagiarizing when you haven't paid for anything on your iPod?

Maybe you don't. But I promise you this...they'll get a failing grade in English.

Dissent

I started my Pre-AP classes today with a quote from chapter II of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Dissent is such an important component of a free society. The majority is not always right, even though it believes it is because it's the majority, and majority rules. Sometimes, the majority has a nasty habit of painting dissenters as wrong-headed, frightening, immoral, even evil.

Cool discussion starter, huh?

I love teaching Fahrenheit 451. This is the 12th time I've started the school year with Bradbury's classic. The book never stops being relevant because the day-to-day living out of our constitutional ideals never stops being a struggle. Watch the news. You'll see that struggle playing out within the first five minutes.

In his "Coda" to Fahrenheit, Bradbury said, "There is more than one way to burn a book, and the world is full of people running around with lit matches."

I've posted this link before, but it bears repeating. The ALA keeps data on all formal challenges to public libraries, school libraries, and classrooms. This is their most challenged/banned list for the last decade. They also sort the data by year and by author, or you can see which classics are the most challenged/banned. For the most recent years, they also post the reasons why a particular book was challenged.

I gave the lists for the last two years and for the decade to my students. They were flabbergasted that books like the Junie B. Jones children's series are on the list. That particular series is beloved by a lot of kids because they discovered their love of reading with Junie. Goosebumps and Captain Underpants are on the list too.

Some of my more naive students were surprised to find the Harry Potter series at the top of the decade list. I explained that Harry Potter is challenged because of religious viewpoint. One confused student said, "But it's about how love is the most powerful force in the universe."

Out of the mouths of babes...

Interestingly, J.K. Rowling falls off the author list after 2003. I interpret this to mean that most of the challenges came early in the decade and that people have cooled down a little over Harry and the gang. One can only hope.

I asked students to tally the number of books they had read on the banned lists. The competition became fierce as students tried to add books to their tally they had started, but not finished. Or they wanted to count every Junie B. Jones they had ever read separately. One student had legitimately read 35 books on the combined lists. I've only read 44, so I was impressed. I'm challenging them to add to their tally before their freshman year is over, and we're going to count again at the end.

My favorite moment came when one young man asked me with wide eyes, "What happens if you read a banned book?"

I responded solemnly, "You burst into flames."

The poor kid doesn't know me yet, and "Oh my god...my teacher is crazy" crossed his face. Then, he realized I must be joking and laughed. I did have to explain that he would not be committing a crime if he read a banned book. I went further and said I believed the people who had the books removed from a library had committed a crime against every patron of that library.

I'm subversive like that.

But I'm not the only one. Mills said that suppressing ideas robs all of humanity of the opportunity to pursue the truth. President Eisenhower said, "Freedom cannot be censored into existence."

If we can't respect our neighbor's dissenting idea, then we have to find a way to respect his right to have a dissenting idea without limiting access to it. Censorship is a society killer.

You don't have to take my word for it. Read Fahrenheit 451.

Challenged Books

The American Library Association (ALA) published their annual list of most frequently challenged books last week. As this past year was the last one in the decade, they also posted their Top 100 most frequently challenged books of the decade. I use these lists every year when I'm teaching Fahrenheit 451, which, ironically, is on the Top 100 list. As always, these lists make me shake my head in dismay.

The ALA defines a challenge as a written, formal complaint requesting that materials in a library or school be removed or restricted. A challenge does not include a parent asking that their student not read a particular book. I've encountered both of these situations, and although I found both disheartening, there is a distinct difference.

Early in my career, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (#5 on the Top 100) was required reading for freshmen on the pre-AP English track. One parent decided that not only was her daughter not going to read it, nobody else's child should either. She sent a long letter to the school in which she had a list of every curse word in the novel and how many times it appeared. The "shits," "hells," "damns, " and "son-of-a-bitches" were all neatly listed in a table with a number next to them to show how many occurrences there were in the book. Underneath the table, several passages were quoted to show the profanity in context.

I'll never forget that moment with the English department as we read the letter together and were rendered speechless. Steinbeck's masterpiece on loyalty, loneliness, power vs powerlessness, dreams, and most importantly, friendship was reduced to a list of four letter words. Kids are moved by this book. They remember it long after they've put it down, and it has nothing to do with the 42 (I made that number up. I don't know how many times it's in there.)occurrences of the word "shit." It has everything to do with that final tragic scene between George and Lennie. Discussion as to whether George's final act was selfish or selfless continues over multiple class periods. Kids think critically, form an argument and then articulate it, and challenge their own pre-conceived notions of friendship. It's good stuff.

In the end, the parent backed down with an agreement to give her daughter an alternative assignment. The girl wasn't in my section of the class, and I don't even remember what the alternative assignment was. I do know her daughter missed out on a rich educational opportunity. What really hacked me off was the parent's attempt to deprive every other child in the pre-AP program of that opportunity. I respect a parent's right to make decisions for her own child, but I don't believe she has the right to make decisions for mine or anyone else.

Just this school year, I had a parent insist her son not read Paul Volponi's young adult novel Black and White. I blogged about it, and you can read the whole story here. The incident made me ill, but it didn't outrage me in the same way as the Of Mice and Men challenge. This parent took the book out of her own son's hands, but she wasn't trying to take it out of any other child's hands. I don't like it, but I can live with it.

At the beginning of every school year, I do a reading survey with the kids to get a sense of their reading habits and to discover what books they've read and loved. Many leisure activities compete with reading for a kid's time and interest, but I've discovered that most of them will still give a book a chance if it captures their imagination. The list below represents books on one of the two ALA lists that one or more my kids has named as his/her favorite book ever.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Meyers
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
Cut, by Patricia McCormick
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle

What was your favorite book as a teenager? Did the experience of reading that book affect your subsequent reading habits? I wonder how the kids who listed these books would have been changed if someone had deprived them of their favorite book ever.

Screaming, Running Bimbos

Thanks to March Madness, I am at home on this beautiful Friday afternoon. You see, here in Kentucky, we worship at the alter of Basketball. In addition to the NCAA tourney, the Kentucky state basketball tournament is underway down the road in Lexington. Now, if you ask the powers that be in Frankfort, they will explain that we are out for something to do with KEA. Riiiiiiight. Go SC Cards! Go Cats!

I'm not complaining either way. I'm writing my first blog post of the year from my deck. Goodbye Old Man Winter. Hello Spring! (The golf umbrella is necessary to see my screen. YAY SUN!)

I started my day off with a long overdue cut and highlight from my friend and hair stylist, Sheri. When I sat down in her chair, I noticed the television.

"Are you watching reruns of Lost?"

"No. Something on Lifetime's movie network."

I didn't even know there was such a thing, but then, when I sit down to watch TV, it's usually with something specific in mind. Anyway, the movie playing caught my eye because four women were running and screaming through a jungle.

"Why are they in the jungle?"

"I dunno. I was watching something before this and I just didn't change the channel."

She offered to change to something else, but I wasn't there to watch TV. We usually gab the whole time she's doing my hair. A foil highlight is labor intensive and time-consuming and allows a lot of time to catch up. Sheri is fun to talk to because her irreverent sense of humor mirrors mine. I guess that's why our attention kept returning to the Lifetime movie.

"Oh hey, look. There's only three of them running and screaming now."

"I think the other one fell down, and they left her."

"Their hair looks really good for having run through the jungle for the last 20 minutes."

All three women had long, flowing, artfully-mussed locks. Two blondes and a brunette. The missing girl was also a brunette. By the end of the movie, only the blondes remained. I felt good about my decision to highlight my hair back to a golden blonde. My survival chances are increased if I ever run and scream through the jungle.

"Must be hard to run in a tight mini-skirt and no bra."

"Seriously. Why is this show on Lifetime and not Spike?"

All three women were busting out of their blouses. They obviously hadn't planned on a sprint through rough terrain when they dressed that morning. In fact, it looked like they had planned on hitting a club...or a street corner. They didn't stop screaming long enough to explain how they ended up in the jungle.

We went back to our gabbing until Sheri asked, "Why is the prettiest girl always the most hysterical in these situations?"

I looked back at the television, and sure enough, the blondest, bustiest bimbo was blubbering inside some kind of concrete bunker. The less blonde, less busty bimbo tried unsuccessfully to calm her down. The calm one sat with her back to a wall. The blubbering girl stood in front of an open window.

"Whoever is chasing them is about to grab the hysterical one."

And right on cue, a wild-eyed man reached through the window and grabbed the sobbing girl. He led her at gunpoint back to his lair where he tied her up, waved his gun, and ranted a lot. His ranting lasted long enough for the more sensible girl's boyfriend (at least I think he was) to charge in and save the day.

Sheri and I continued to narrate the movie in the tradition of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I can recap the whole thing in one sentence. A good guy and a bad guy square off with several expendable, running, screaming bimbos as window dressing. On a network whose demographic is women.

Come on Lifetime. You can do better. Women like romantic heroes, but a romantic hero doesn't exist without a heroine. A bimbo is NOT a heroine. A heroine is just as likely to rescue her man as she is to be rescued by him. If the executives at Lifetime need some examples of strong, capable women, I can recommend several good romance novels.

I'm a PC, and I'm Frustrated

You've seen those computer commercials. Mac is young and hip, and while pleasant, PC is middle-aged and somewhat dowdy. PC is plagued with viruses. When they bring the new PC in, he's slick in an expensive suit, but restrictive in what he will allow the potential buyer to do. I've always thought this was brilliant advertising, but I viewed it as exactly that...advertising. Clever, but until recently, not enough for this creature of habit to consider switching.

In the spring of 2008, I bought a new laptop, sleek, lightweight, with a big high resolution screen. I opted out of the extended warranty. We never spend money on those things. The one time we did, there was a loophole that kept us from cashing in when the electronic device in question went bad. Of course, one year and one month after I bought the computer, it began having issues. For no apparent reason, it would freeze up while I was in the middle of something important. The task manager wouldn't even open, and I would have to force restart. The interval between these freezes shortened until finally, the thing wouldn't boot all the way up without locking up.

I took my computer to the Geek Squad. They looked it over and told me I had a bad hard drive. Cost of replacement and labor -- $200. Seriously? A third of the cost of a good replacement?

This happened mid-summer when, as a teacher, I am flat broke. I can pay the bills and that's it. So, I put my shiny, nonfunctional computer on a shelf. I dragged out a dinosaur I had previously used only for word processing because it was too old to talk to my wireless router. I bought an adapter and made do. After school started and I had money again, I kept making do. I didn't want to pay $200 to fix a computer that shouldn't be broken after only a year.

The dinosaur didn't like working harder. It was happy to be a glorified typewriter. Recently, that testiness translated into a sluggishness that made doing anything, even word processing, highly frustrating. Yesterday, I hit my breaking point.

I retrieved the shiny, nonfunctional computer, crossed my fingers, and started it up. I needed to retrieve last year's tax return and some pictures from the hard drive before I bit the bullet and fixed it. Lo and behold, it booted all the way up. I copied the tax returns and my pictures onto a flash drive, alternately holding my breath and whispering, "oh, please, please, please work." After I copied all the essential information, I opened Internet Explorer. My luck ran out, and the computer locked up tighter than Fort Knox.

I called my tech-savvy friend, Thomas, for a recommendation on a computer repair person. I had decided I would rather shell out a boatload of money to a person than to a corporation.

"Doesn't sound like a hard drive problem to me. Sounds like you have registry errors. And even if it is a hard drive problem, it shouldn't cost $200 to replace it. Try reformatting the hard drive and running a system recovery."

I did, and it worked. My computer is humming along like it did the day I brought it home. Total cost? $0

Imagine that. The Geek Squad was going to overcharge me to replace a hard drive that didn't need replacing. I let a perfectly good computer sit unused for 5 months. Next time, I'm calling Thomas first and the Geek Squad never.

According to Thomas, this isn't an unusual problem. Some PCs have to run a system recovery every six months or so. Seriously? I'm overusing that word, I know, but seriously? I have to erase everything on my computer and start from scratch every six months? Are you listening, Microsoft?

I'm a PC, and I'm frustrated.

In which I become the grammar police

When people discover I'm an English teacher, they sometimes get all weird about watching their grammar. I usually just chuckle because I have enough social grace not to correct adults when they end a sentence with a preposition or drop a double negative into the conversation. It's part of the vernacular I've heard my whole life. While my mother meticulously corrected my non-Standard English, I understand the conventions of our regional Kentucky dialect.

I do make a point of always correcting my students. I don't devalue the language taught them by their mothers and grandmothers. I impress upon them the importance of code-switching. Maybe "you was goin' down yonder" at home or with your friends, but "you were going over there" in an academic or professional setting. By and large, kids get this.

We all get it. We code-switch all the time. My author voice and my teacher voice are different. I choose my words more carefully around my grandmother than I do my best friends. Shoot, when I hang out with certain branches of my family, my accent thickens and the occasional "ain't" falls out of my mouth. HOWEVER, when I am in a professional situation, I absolutely use Standard English. Capital S. Capital E.

When professional people can't code-switch, it crawls all over me. When professional educators can't code-switch, I have to restrain myself from calling them out on the spot.

I recently sat through two days of professional development. The information was great. The presenters were experts. They clearly knew their content, and overall, did a good job of delivering it. Unfortunately, one of the presenters had an annoying grammatical habit. To make her point, she often referred to her practices as a teacher by saying, "I did this my own self." Or "When I did this my personal self..."

ACK!!!! You are talking to a room full of educators. Your own self? Your personal self? Do you have some other self besides your personal self? Your impersonal self, perhaps?

The first time I dismissed it as a slip of the tongue. We all make them. By the third or fourth time, I was rolling my eyes at the English teacher sitting next to me. The fifth or sixth time induced whispered comments, and while I was commenting or chuckling at a comment, I missed the content she was trying to convey. I was seriously distracted by her "own self."

You can't code-switch if you don't know the Standard English rule. No matter how intelligent you are, your speech will give the impression you are an uneducated rube. I preach this to my students. I drill it into my boys' head when I meticulously correct their non-Standard English. I know it's annoying because my mother did it to me. I would ask, "Where's my shirt at?" She would respond, "behind the at."

I'm whispering a prayer of thanks to my mother. People may whisper cattily when I speak, but it won't be because of bad grammar.

Christmas Lights

I know I'm going to sound a bit Scroogish in this post, so let me start by saying, I'm not a Christmas hater. I like Christmas just fine.

In December.

I had to run a couple of errands after the sun set this evening, and I saw several of my neighbors had put up their Christmas lights. I was in the car by myself, and I think I said out loud, "Are you freaking kidding me?"

I don't know why I'm surprised. The Christmas commercials have been running on TV for a week or more. A local radio station is already playing Christmas music. Wal-Mart had their Christmas merchandise out the day after Halloween.

I hate this trend. Seriously. I really, really HATE this trend.

The Christmas lights actually soured my mood which is, I'm pretty sure, the exact opposite of what they're supposed to do. My reaction bears examination. Why should I care if somebody else wants to celebrate the season for more than a month? It's their electric bill after all.

I went shopping this morning for my Thanksgiving meal. My dad and stepmom are coming to stay with us for the long weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. We'll cook together, eat, lay around watching football and movies. We'll spend hours just catching up with all the little details we don't get around to sharing on Facebook or the phone. My stepmom and I will do some shopping on Friday at a reasonable hour. While I'm not a Black Friday fanatic, I'm not stupid. The sales are good, and it's my only opportunity to shop with Patricia. We won't be getting up at the crack of dawn and waiting in a cold line. All in all, we'll have a laid back family THANKSGIVING weekend.

Pushing Christmas on me when I'm thinking about Thanksgiving just pisses me off. Let me enjoy this holiday without feeling like I'm already behind on the next one.

Stretching the season out so long takes something away from it. Scarcity gives anything value. An overabundance of a resource makes it cheap. Holidays are special because they come once a year. Stretching the Christmas season to 5-6 weeks means you are spending more than 10% of the year celebrating.

We won't put up our decorations until two weeks before Christmas, and my boys will be certain we are the last people in the world to put up a tree. Maybe, but who cares? I will be ready to look at that tree and appreciate it until Christmas day. Any earlier and I'll be completely sick of vacuuming needles, and I'll start to resent it. I won't put any presents under the tree until a week out, maybe less. That really makes my boys crazy, but when the presents do appear, it will be special. Remember when you had to WAIT for Christmas? My teenagers will be 5 years old again, and that's a gift you can't buy.

To my friends out there already celebrating Christmas, I'm not bashing you. Have at it. I just won't be joining you for a few weeks. When I do, I'll be the life of the party because I won't have holiday fatigue.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

A Facebook Rant

Social Networking can be a beautiful thing. Facebook, Twitter, blogging are all great ways to meet like-minded folks and stay in touch with long distance friends and family. I check in with Facebook and Twitter every day. I roll through all the blogs I follow at least every other day or so depending on how hectic things are.

I've chosen to break my social networks into categories. My friends on Facebook are people I actually know in real life. Now granted, I haven't seen some of my Facebook friends in over 20 years, but we really did know each other once upon a time. The people I follow on Twitter are mostly book people. I follow agents, editors, authors, book reviewers, book publicists, etc. (Okay...and Ellen Degeneres and Ryan Secrest, I admit it.) Reading Twitter keeps me up to date on what's going on in that world. I've discovered the most interesting tidbits from my Twitter people.

Here's the thing though. Some folks use their social networks for purposes that don't mesh with my own, and I'm in a quandary as to what to do about it. Blocking Twitter followers is no big thing. I don't know those people, and they don't know me. If they become tiresome, I just stop following. Facebook is another matter. Linda's daughter, Mallory, informed us that blocking a Facebook friend is just not done. Really...it is apparently the worst kind of social networking faux pas.

But what if they are really pissing me off?? Am I obligated to keep listening to them? Mallory tells me to hide them from my news feed so I won't see their status updates. Okay...but that seems dishonest to me.

While the occasional political or religious status update on Facebook is fine, I'm not interested in having our online friendship serve as a platform for your political or religious point of view. Would you spew the vitriolic political rhetoric to me in person that you're forcing me to read online? I think not because I KNOW you in person. I avoid political hate-mongers in all other forms of media. I surely don't want to read it on Facebook. Nor do I want to read hellfire and damnation scripture references every day. I'm good spiritually, so thanks but no thanks.

Facebook is for sharing fun bits of your day...or the struggles of your day because maybe I can help. Tell me the funny thing your kid did or that great restaurant you tried. Tell a joke...wish me luck...tell me about a good book. I like seeing your quiz results even when I think you must have lied to get that result. :) I can even live with your mafia wars and farmville updates even though I will continue to ignore your invitations to whack Vinny or raise chickens.

Comments about politics and religion should be made online in the same way you would make them in person. And if you throw them in my face online, I will treat you the same way I would in person. I will leave. I'm probably going to offend some folks, but if I do they would be the same folks who are offending me on a regular basis.

If you really have a point of view you are dying to express, create a blog. You will probably find like-minded people, and I can say, "Why don't you just blog about it."

Black and White

Today marks the end of Banned Books Week...the the ALA's celebration of our freedom to read. I make note of the week every year, if for no other reason, to spark a student's interest in reading. The forbidden fruit of a challenged book appeals to some kids. My pre-AP class takes note of the week because they read Fahrenheit 451 over the summer, and the tie-in is obvious. Honestly, a brief conversation on library day is all the mention Banned Books Week usually gets from me. This year it was a little more poignant.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to take a book out of a student's hand for the first time in my career.

My principal came to me after school one day. "Kathy, has the English department added a book called Black and White to the curriculum?"

"No."

"Have you specifically assigned this book to a student?"

"No, but I have recommended it to several. I require each student to read one book independently each 9 weeks. They choose the book. My only requirement is that they choose a novel, a biography, or narrative non-fiction."

"Okay, so if a student has that book for your class, then it's because they chose it themselves in the library."

"Yes."

My principal went on his way, and that was that...or so I thought. The next afternoon he was back.

"Mom wants her son to select a different book. She was offended by the content of Black and White."

I shrugged, "I'll help him find something different the next time we go to the library."

I didn't get too bent out of shape in that moment. I completely respect the right of parents to help their kids make choices that are in line with their values. This mom wasn't challenging the book's placement in our library, so she wasn't trying to make choices for my kid and every other kid that patronizes the library. She was simply concerned about her own son. Fine.

Several days later, we went to the library. I was surprised to see the boy with Black and White in his hand. I was even more surprised to see him go to the desk and renew it. I had assumed (yes, I know all about assuming) he would immediately turn it back in when his mom told him to because teenage boys always do what their moms tell them...right?

Yeah.

The librarian raised her eyebrows at me. The principal told her about the situation in case the mom decided to challenge the book's placement in the library. When the line at the checkout desk dwindled, we put our heads together. Neither of us wanted to tell him to hand over the book. Finally, I sucked it up. I'm the teacher. I pulled the boy aside, and the librarian started scanning the sports section for something different he might like.

"Um...student...weren't you supposed to turn this book back in?"

His face turned beet red. "Yeah."

"Well?"

"I want to know how it ends."

Well crap on a stick. The kid liked the book...was about 50 pages from the end and wanted to know what happened...and I had to take it away from him. As an English teacher, an avid reader, a writer, and a lifelong bibliophile, it made me truly ill. Instead of throwing up, I smiled ruefully, put my arm around him, and walked him to the desk where the librarian had several basketball themed novels artfully arranged.

In a surprising turn of events, he opted not to choose a sports book, going instead for a science fiction novel. The librarian suggested The Dead and the Gone, and he checked it out. I sincerely hope he likes it. I hope he gets to finish it.

I still support a parent's right to make choices for her child. I don't know what this parent found offensive about Black and White, but I can't imagine anything in a young adult novel that would override a boy's enthusiasm for reading it.

I wish she could have seen the look on her son's face when he dropped the book into the book return. I saw it, and I never want to be the cause of that expression again.

Libraries

I found a link on Moonrat's blog that floored me. As of October 2, 2009, the Philadelphia Public Library system is closing its doors. Read the article here. There is also a great discussion in the comments section of Moonrat's blog.

Philadelphia is the city where the fundamental belief of our nation was given words and life. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." The irony of losing libraries in Philadelphia is tragic.

In my classroom, I indoctrinate students with another fundamental belief. "Knowledge is Power." People with accurate information are the people with power. Libraries have always been one of the great equalizers in providing access to information. Several of the commenters on Moonrat's blog talked about libraries being like livery stables...in the digital age they are obsolete. This comparison is just wrong.

Libraries have changed radically since I was in high school. They have adapted to the electronic age, but their fundamental mission remains the same. Libraries provide books and information FREE to anyone in the community. I have surprisingly large chunks of students who do not have computers in their homes or who do not have Internet access. This seems outrageous to many of us...almost akin to not having indoor plumbing or electricity...but the reality is there. When times get tight, and they are, families choose to keep the indoor plumbing and the electricity over the Internet service.

These families rely on the public library. I know our school library spends more of its budget on keeping electronic database subscriptions up to date than it does on books. My guess is our small town public library does the same. Any night of the week, you will find all of the computers in the public library occupied. Saying libraries are obsolete in the digital age is ignorance.

Library programming is integral to many communities as well. Our library has fun activities all summer long for children and teens centered around literacy. These programs morph during the school year to support school activities. The library has classes for adults to help them navigate the digital age. Information is useless if people don't know how to access it.

Then there are the books. Where else can you read to your heart's content without paying a dime for the privilege? I have always been an avid reader, so libraries have always seemed like treasure houses to me. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the weekly trips we made to the public library. My mother waited patiently while I spent hours in the stacks. I would come home with a carefully selected stack of books, and every week it felt like Christmas.

Where will the children of Philadelphia go for books?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Without equal access to information, those are just pretty words.

Those who can, Teach

Fair warning: This blog post is a major rant.

I am a writer. I'm proud of that, and I'm working hard to hone my craft. Right now, I'm still in the aspiring author category. Writing feeds my soul, but it does not pay my bills. Teaching pays my bills.

I am a teacher, and I am VERY proud of that label. I just read a blog post by a published writer whose work I admire. He repeated a maxim that we teachers hear often. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Normally, I chalk that statement up to ignorance and the speaker's own need to boost their self-importance by belittling someone else. I'm usually able to let it roll off my back and move on, but to hear those words from a writer makes me ill.

That statement contains two erroneous premises, one explicit and one implied. The explicit premise is that teachers are teaching because they are incapable of doing the thing they teach. This premise is inherently stupid. If I couldn't write, how in the hell could I teach someone else to write? Writing isn't some theoretical pursuit that happens in the abstract. Every writer out there, including the misguided author who made the statement, knows this. I wonder if this writer has ever offered to critique a colleague's work? How would he be able to offer any guidance at all if he could not write himself? Every time I sit down with a student, I'm essentially critiquing their writing.

The implied premise is what really crawls all over me. Essentially, it says that teaching is a fall-back position that anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of a given content area can do. Saying that those "who can't, teach" fails to acknowledge that teaching requires an entirely different skill set from the subject being taught. My best friend is a math teacher in the army reserves where she is a drill Sargent. She tells me about some of her fellow drill Sargents who scream in a private's face for doing a task wrong, but don't teach them how to do it right. She can see they don't know how to break the task down and explain it to someone else. She often goes quietly behind them and teaches the poor kid how to correctly perform the task. She is a teacher. She owns that skill set.

As an English teacher, I have to assess each student's proficiency level as a reader or writer, determine what steps should be taken to move that student forward, implement those steps, and then assess the degree to which those steps succeeded. That student comes to me for an hour each day in a class of 30 other students who require the same attention. I'm a tremendous reader and a good writer, but those skills are only half of what I need to do my job. This is why one in three teachers leave the profession within five years of entering it. The better maxim might be "those who can't stand the heat get the hell out of the kitchen."

I expect the self-important, entitled, ignorant assholes of the world not to understand the satisfaction gained from improving their communities through service. I'm just floored to hear this statement from someone who so obviously benefited from good teachers on the way to his success. Writing is an act of creation that requires sweat and hard work, but reaching the end of a story, novel, research paper successfully can produce a unrivaled natural high. Teaching is also an act of creation. Providing the opportunity and guidance for a student to acquire a skill that will enrich the rest of their lives is an incredible act of creation. It happens incrementally and usually quietly, but the ripples are infinite.

Cultural Decay or Same Song, Different Verse?

A week or so ago, I posted an entry entitled "Shake it Like a Salt Shaker." My amused response to the song offended at least one reader and possibly others. I started to respond in the comments section of the original post, but I soon realized this topic deserved its own entry.

Here is the reader comment:

Uh...look up the misogynist lyrics and you won't be "LOL" or wondering about the antecedent to the rather vaugue pronoun. I'm hoping desperately that you are trying to be ironic here. If so, your blog is a work of genius.

And yes, it's a great song. And yes, this is exactly what's wrong with our culture. And yes, I know that you can't start a sentence with "And". But I did, and apparently it's also OK to say disturbing things if the beat is good.


I could point to "your blog is a work of genius," say, "why thank you," and move on, but that response minimizes the reader's concern. Honestly, it minimizes my reaction to the comment.

My intent in the post was to mock the poor use of figurative language in the song. I think the song's writing is silly, vapid, and uninspiring. I was going for laughs. If my tone in the first paragraph of the original post doesn't come across as mocking, then I have failed as a writer, and I take responsibility for that. However, I suspect it was the rest of the post that offended the reader.

Beyond the poor writing, I just can't get too worked up about the lyrics. Are they misogynistic? I didn't look up the complete lyrics because I just don't care that much, but absolutely. What I did catch was misogynistic. No question about it. The man in the song clearly doesn't see the dancer as anything but a sexual object over which to leer. Do I think this is a good attitude to possess? Nope. I am a woman who values her personhood. I know that I am intelligent and strong and have value far beyond my sexuality.

So why am I not fearful for the culture at large? In his/her second comment (not copied), Anonymous implies that I just don't get it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I get it just fine. There are men out there who only see women as sex objects or who see women as inherently weak or who see women as inherently evil. There are men who don't believe women have the right or the capability to take on leadership roles in their churches, schools, businesses, or even in the military. I get that.

But guess what? This isn't a new attitude among some men. And please note, I say some men. The men in my world, the ones I choose to make part of my life, do not have these attitudes. (What's really frightening is that some women have these same attitudes.) Look at history, religion, and literature going back as far as people have had the written word. Misogynist men have always been around. Works of literature...even the great ones...are filled with misogynist references. Shakespeare himself said "Frailty, thy name is woman."

Weak men will always be threatened by strong women. Always. These men will always look for ways to devalue women. "Shake it Like a Salt Shaker" and other songs like it are simply the modern incarnation of that attitude. They are not signs of the apocalypse. At least that's how I see it. You are welcome to see it differently and tell me so. I'll listen respectfully.

The beauty of a free society is that we each have the right to express our opinions, even the misogynist rapper with poor writing skills, but with each right comes a responsibility. We each have the responsibility to be critical consumers of media. I teach that skill to my students and my own children. To illustrate my point, I didn't delete Anonymous' YouTube link. Anything that smells of censorship is offensive to me. By the same token, I didn't click on it. If it truly is that disgusting, why would I want to see it?

I also don't believe every song about sex is misogynistic, but this post is already long, and that's a topic for another day.

I welcome your comments.

A Whiff of Kerosene

Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is required reading for my honors class. The premise of his novel is that books will not die with a bang, but with a whimper. People will quit reading, quit caring, and quit thinking, and very few will take note when the firemen show up to burn down their book-hoarding neighbor's house.

The firemen showed up this week in an unlikely place...retail book giant, Amazon. For those of you who haven't followed the controversy, a brief explanation is in order. Amazon assigns sales rankings to everything it sells. These sales ranking not only identify top-sellers on the site, but also provide the algorithm to conduct searches on Amazon. When an item on Amazon is stripped of its sales ranking, then it becomes invisible in Amazon's search engine unless you are specifically searching by author or title. On Sunday, the Internet exploded at the discovery of an insidious new policy at Amazon. The retail behemoth has stripped the sales ranking of anything that it deems "adult content." So unless you specifically search DH Lawrence or Lady Chatterly's Lover, you won't find it on Amazon.

Romance novels, books that provide help to rape victims, and most notably, almost everything with a gay or lesbian theme (including an analysis of the impact of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" on the military) have been stripped of their sales ranking. Still maintaining a sales ranking...A history of Playboy Centerfolds, the memoirs of several straight porn stars, and a wide variety of sex toys. Somehow the first group is considered "adult content" and the second group isn't.

Hello Firemen. Hello Censorship.

Initially, Amazon explained the policy as an attempt to keep offensive content from popping up in a search by an unsuspecting patron. You can almost smell the kerosene...hear Captain Beatty's voice. Amazon is saving us from ourselves. Later, after the great Easter Twitter/Blog explosion, Amazon backpedaled and called it a "glitch". As of this writing, there has been no apology. On Monday afternoon Amazon called the incident a "hamfisted cataloguing error" and began to reinstate the sales-ranking of some of the 57,000 titles affected.

The positive aspect to this story is the outcry from bookish people everywhere. We're not willing to watch the firemen burn, shrug, and go on about our business. Social media gives individuals a collective voice that is loud and far-reaching. And maybe the whole story isn't as sinister as I'm making it sound. Some have suggested this is not an intentional ploy to censor gay/lesbian content, but evidence that in a giant corporation, the left hand is often unaware of what the right hand is doing.

Either way, the power Amazon wields in publishing by virtue of its size is frightening. Stripping authors of their sales rankings cost them sales when potential readers didn't find them in a search. Even worse, readers' choices have been arbitrarily limited. And that is the very definition of censorship.

My Twitter friend Criss, has an extensive collection of links on her blog. So in the interest of not reinventing the wheel, here is the link to her blog.

Living in a half-assed world, Part Deux

I told a commenter on my original "Living in a half-assed world" post that shaking your fist at the system is not productive. Well, color me hypocritical because I am shaking my fist. Not at the publishing world mind you, but at a different kind of half-asser...the kind who can't hear criticism. Let me tell you a story.

A person I am close to... for the sake of the story, let's call him Bob...works in a profession akin to sales. He is good at his job, bringing new clients to the business. His department is responsible for 33% of the company's business, and he brings in more new clients than anyone. In recent weeks, Bob has been concerned about some renovation going on in his building. Like many businesses, Bob's company has had some financial difficulties. He wondered why, in these hard times, the company was spending money on sprucing up the lobby. The decor was actually quite appropriate to Bob's business. No one had informed anyone in Bob's department of the changes, and he found himself apologizing for the mess each time he brought a prospective client to the office.

Today, the painters arrived. Most of Bob's department was out of the office...on the road. Bob watched in horror as the painters prepared to paint over the logo and original artwork in the lobby in colors that could only be described as unattractive. Mud brown ("mud" was not the first word that came to Bob's mind when he saw this particular shade of brown, but it is the kindest) and pea green were replacing a commissioned mural. Naturally, Bob was distraught. He called the person in charge of maintaining the building. They referred him to someone higher up in the company's administration. Bob was certain the highest members of the company's administration could not possibly be aware of the impending design disaster in the lobby. So he emailed them and outlined the problem, hoping to find someone who could stop the madness.

Oh. My. God. A plague of locusts that can only be described in biblical proportions descended on Bob's head. The CEO of the company emailed Bob that he had never received a more disrespectful email, and he couldn't even talk to him now because he was so angry. The head of Bob's division requested a meeting with Bob and his immediate supervisor at 8am Monday morning. Bob's immediate supervisor raced into Bob's office and demanded to know what the hell he was doing insulting the CEO.

Bob was flummoxed. All he had done was say that the paint was "awful" and did not represent the company in the same way as the logo and highly popular mural. He was concerned that business would be affected as the lobby is the FIRST impression new clients had of the company. He had reminded the administration that his department was the most productive in bringing in new business. Bob's supervisor dropped his head into his hands.

Turns out the CEO had hired high-priced designers to tell him "mud" brown and pea green were more aesthetically pleasing than the mural. Bob simply looked at the new scheme and said, "The emperor has no clothes." The emperor took it personally, and Bob will defend his honesty on Monday. Because of Bob's impressive sales record, he will not lose his job, but he will have to say his mea culpas.

Some folks just can't hear criticism, even when it's not mean-spirited and in their best interest. One wonders how they've managed as long as they have with such thin skin. It's a mutation of the same disease we saw after #queryfail. In the times we live in, improvement is imperative, and sometimes we have to hear unpleasant truths. Anything else is just half-assed.

Living in a half-assed world

I'm going to rant a little bit, and I suspect for many of my friends who read this blog, I'm preaching to the choir...but here we go. I get tired of living in a half-assed world. So many people out there are willing to do the absolute least amount of work and then gripe about not being successful or about the horribly mean people willing to point out that they are half-assers. I see it EVERY day at school. Some students do little to nothing and wonder why they are failing. After determining that it couldn't possibly be their fault, they blame the teacher or the system. Even worse, their parents often support them in this attitude.

This isn't new in my day job, but what set me off was evidence of this same trend in the second career I am fostering. As you know, I've written a novel I am shopping around to agents. In the publishing world this is known as querying. There is a process involved, and if you do your homework, the steps in the process are readily available to anyone interested. On Thursday, one of the agents I've queried hosted an event called #queryfail on Twitter. Several literary agents and editors posted failed queries live as they read and responded to them. They did not identify authors or titles, just bits and pieces of the query that made it clear why the author was not being asked for more. Sometimes the idea was just wrong. I remember one about a relationship based on mutual vomiting practices. Ugh...don't expect to see this in your local bookstore anytime soon. But most of the time, the query failed because of someone being half-assed about their query letter. They didn't follow clearly posted submission guidelines. They queried a genre the agent explicitly states she doesn't rep. They didn't hit spellcheck or edit for nuts and bolts errors in their letter. STUPID stuff...easily fixed stuff...stuff that keeps the agent from even considering asking for your manuscript.

Yesterday, another agent posted a blog in which he commented about his lack of participation in #queryfail. In what I can only attribute as a monumental suck-up to this agent, a long list of comments ensued lamblasting the agent who hosted queryfail (and the 8 or 10 others who participated) for her "lack of professionalism" and "snarkiness."

GIVE ME A FLIPPIN BREAK, PEOPLE!!! If you don't want to be called out for being a half-asser, then DON'T BE A HALF-ASSER! Why do we put our arms around these people and coddle them when they didn't do the work necessary to be successful? One commentor said, "It takes just as much effort to write a bad novel as a good one." Really? Really??? I don't think so, but just for kicks and giggles, let's say that's true. The author tried hard, and we should reward that. Anyone out there ever read Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron?" It's about a world that has completely lowered the bar so that no one fails or feels bad about failing. It's enough that people tried hard, so let's reward them. Are you willing to take that attitude about your surgeon? Your airline pilot? Your kid's teacher? I hope not.

It's not mean to point out that someone did a half-assed job. If you really care about the person, it's necessary to help them succeed. In the business world (and publishing is most definitely a business), then it's instructive to the rest of us to see what not to do. My query letter isn't perfect, and I'm still honing it. I want to be published, so I'm meticulously doing my research on each agent I query. What do they rep? What are their submission guidelines? I don't feel sorry for the half-assers. I'm glad I have a leg up on them.