So I listen to a podcast called “Planet Money“. They do bite-sized explanations of concepts and current events in the world of economics. This week they did a special about economic concepts in children’s books (transcript), like Frog and Toad’s “Cookies” for credible commitment and “Put Me In the Zoo” for labor mismatch. And to do this, they visited a third-grade class in the Olentangy school district near Columbus, Ohio, and read some of these stories allowed. That’s where it went wrong. Because they had this Dolores Umbridge mother fucker named Amanda Beeman, a “communications person from the district“. She sat in with them and monitored the books they read.…
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Mommy, Why Is That Man Cancelling Culture?
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” Ever since I heard those words in “The Dark Knight”, I keep seeing it proved again and again, like a horrible Blue Car syndrome. Role models, world leaders, artists, athletes. Time makes fools of us all. Except now those fools have teams of Proud Boys and Twitter trolls to call to their side. Like most terms, “cancel culture” started as light slang being thrown around. If you were “swiped right” you were canceled. People tweeted at Kanye West “you’re canceled” when he did something stupid. Now it’s grown to where public outcry on social media…
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I Am a Dick
The fact is, I was going to write a counter-argument parable to Jim C. Hines. You see, I was angry. I was sincerely trying to understand this concept, but I kept getting shut down and told “you don’t get it, so I’m not going to explain it to you”. It was going to be fairly well-thought out too. It was about a pig who went into a book store, where she was going to complain to the store owner (a Wolf) how they shouldn’t stock the new book from Tim W. Grimes because it contains references to magic. And her son couldn’t do magic — some kids were making fun…
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Little Red Riding Hines and the Big Bad Wolf
I don’t know why I keep getting in kerfuffles with Jim C. Hines. I think that if we ever met in person, we’d get along great. It’s just we have some convictions we disagree on, or I’m woefully ignorant of. It’s not like I’m coming away obstinate and unchanged. I now understand that inability to give consent for sex = consent not given. You’d think that’d be a no-brainer, but yes, it did need to stew in my brain a little while before I understood it completely. White male privilege is an insidious thing. I resolved it by using the metaphor of stage-diving. You want to jump off the stage…
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Where’s the Sex in The Hunger Games?
This’ll probably get some false positives on the google searches (sorry), but I had to mention this. I saw this on Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2010. What? Where the hell was The Hunger Games sexually explicit? There wasn’t a single sex scene, no nudity. Someone needs to tell me where that part was, because I sure as hell want to read that part again. This is why censorship sucks. Because these mother-hen “concerned parents” always have their heads up their asses. They never read the book in question, and if they do, they always misinterpret it, take it out of context, or never understand the context that it’s in.…
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The Penny Arcade Dickwolves Go To State
I’ve been interested in reading this Penny Arcade Dickwolves debacle ever since this timeline was posted because it deals with many intriguing issues. In mass media outlets, often you end up with political correctness, vocal minorities, and advertising sponsors winning the upper hand, and that’s even if the producers let it go that far. Never do the creators get a say. That’s why people like me turn to the web to find entertainment that’s not limited by corporate executives. But Penny Arcade is a entrepreneur webcomic, made by guys who aren’t afraid to call a spade a spade. For those who don’t want to click the link, here’s the highlights.…
