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 The most
recent spate of reading children's books started with the NEA books that
I haven't read. The Sole
Propietor recently told me "Thou art the list maker of all listmakers,"
which pleased me inordinately, especially since he didn't know at the
time that I was adding to my lists. He knew of my list of books read and
unread; he knew abou my list of reading. He didn't know that at the time
of the email I was working on pages of Newbery Medalists and Honor Books.
Anyway as I worked on the Newbery page
(another avoidance tactic), I realized how few Newberys I've actually
read. My latest library jaunts (three in the past week, twice downtown
and once in Arapahoe) have sought to rectify that.
Most offensive
bumper sticker to date:
If God isn't a Broncos fan,
Why are sunsets blue and orange?
Well you see nitrogren composes 78% of the atmosphere and sunlight reflecting
off that appears blue. Then there are particulates in the air, natural
and human-induced, that refract sunlight into sunset colors.... Furthermore,
you asshole, the Broncos' colors used to be royal blue and orange and
are now a navyish blue and orange; and the sky at midnight might be navy
blue but that navy never coincides with sunset orange (unless you're under
sodium lights).
Creationism, monotheism, post hoc ergo propter hoc, football fannery;
the stupidities therein defy cataloging.
Is anything
"curried" besides favor? 990424: I mean figuratively, not literally.
Horses are obvious.
Last week's
best X-Files line:
Scully, looking at a body severed at the waist: Should we arrest David
Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes, but not for this.
I played
my usual game of deciding a busmate's whole personality through the book
they're reading. The other day the chapter title was "Liberation
through Submission." I had already pegged her as conservative, so
I had to know submission to what? My eyes flit to the text: "Jesus
knew who he was and accepted his fate..." Aha, I decided. Couching
Christianity in feminist terms: be a whole woman by subordinating yourself
to your man.
In
the library one day HAO pulled from a shelf a book "written"
by a character in a sitcom called "Full House." Practicing her
own one-line rule, she discovered the single worst line in any children's
book ever: "I made sure to eat my hamburger slowly so that it would
be fully digested by the time I went out to play" or something like
that. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle preached good manners and sensible living too,
but at least she was funny. The next day on the bus I glanced at
a line in my regular morning seatmate's book; it was the first page of
a chapter so it didn't show the book title, but that one line revealed
it: "It was one of the rare times Monica was feeling good about herself."
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