At the risk of making some people mad . . .

. . . . I feel like writing about this because I find it fascinating.

My supervisor sent me this address/link:

(http://jaslarue.blogspot.com/2008/07/uncle-bobbys-wedding.html)

I find the all situation discussed in that blog to be fascinating.  Apparently this book “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” is a little kid book about homosexual marriage, and a mother wrote the Librarian and asked them either to remove the book altogether or reclassify it because she didn’t feel it was an appropriate toic for a kid’s book.

I think the Librarian answered politely and respectfully addressed the mother’s concern in the whole situation.  If nothing else, his response is a good model for librarians to use when dealing with a patron who has a dispute about an item in the collection.  It’s a very courteous, appropriate response.

It’s a sticky subject, quite honestly.  But then, the whole censorship issue is.  Who gets to determine what a library has in its collection?  Who determines what people can wear on their t-shirts?  Who says what is an appropriate topic for a kid’s book?

I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and I can give examples out of the Bible how God designed relationships of that nature between a male and a female exclusively; but I’m not so sure we should have a law dictating who we are allowed to marry and who we are not allowed to marry.  It’s the same with prohibitory taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.  America is trying to legistlate morality, and it won’t work.  It never does. 

Personal responsibility of the individual is the only thing that will change the way America is headed. 

I urge Christians to think about it.  If we beg and plead and make a big fuss about libraries banning books about homosexuality, what’s to stop them from banning such popular Christian books like the Left Behind series? (Not that I am advocating reading the Left Behind books . . . . I didn’t much care for them.)

Christians need to back off and understand that not everyone is going to agree with us–and that’s what makes American great.  We’re all free to believe what we want to believe (for now), but if Christians keep at it like they are, that freedom may not last long. 

But I’m also not saying it’s all right to let our little kids run around and read whatever they want to read.  That’s the responsibility of the parent.  It’s the parent’s job to make sure that their child is raised according to their family’s values. 

So maybe Super-Mom who wrote this librarian needs to think a little bit about exactly what she’s asking.  She’s asking a state (or federally) funded agency like a library to remove a book from its collection because of a personal religious disagreement with it, because she doesn’t want to talk to her seven-year-old son about why homosexuality is unbiblical. 

Maybe I’m a cynic–maybe I’m out of place–but, Christians, wake up.  Do we really think we can not talk about these issues with our children?  With our friends?  With our parents?  Can we afford not to be ready to stand up for what we believe?

That’s what the speaker at camp was talking about.  Many parents are not willing to get into the nitty-gritty with their children about the realities of the world because it makes them uncomfortable–so what happens to your kids when they leave the safe, secure nest of your home and end up in the middle of a college campus somewhere while all their friends get drunk, get high, and get laid (sometimes with a same sex partner)?  Your kid will freak out.  They won’t know what to do, what to say, how to act, and everything they thought they knew is going to come crashing down around them.

So Moms and Dads need to step up to the plate and get their kids ready for what they will face when they step out of their door.  They shouldn’t ask the government for help because that’s not the government’s job.  Your kids; your job.  You talk to them about sex.  You talk to them about homosexuality.  You talk to them about what is right and what is wrong because if you don’t do it, someone else will.

New Discovery

Well, I have discovered something amazing.  It’s this website, Triond.com, that allows you to submit articles/short stores/etc and will find websites to post them on.  Then you get paid from the advertisements or something.  I know there’s bound to be catch somewhere so I put up two random things I wrote a long time ago . . . . . we’ll see what happens.

Skillet gave me fits this morning

Okay.  So it really hurts to laugh still.  But I can’t help it!  I was laughing so hard this morning as I drove to work in my handy-dandy rental vehicle. 

All right.  So I had already realized the irony of what album I was listening to when I had my wreck.

Collide.

Yep.  I was listening to Skllet’s Collide album as I crashed through that guard rail.

I realized how fortunate I was that I wasn’t listening to their other album.

Comatose.

 

I couldn’t resist . . . . LOL!

Thanks, Everyone

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the prayers and warm wishes.  Probably most of the known universe knows the story, but I thought I’d tell it again just so everybody knows.

I was coming in to work at 7:00 on Thursday (yesterday), and a guy in a truck got on to K-96 at Ridge.  But he hadn’t strapped his ladders down, and the wind blew really hard.  The ladder on top opened and the wind caught it like a sail and threw it down on the highway.  I braked first before I realized I was going to have to swerve, and swerve I did.  But the wind blew the ladder toward me anyway, and I swerved again and lost control.  I hit the ladder anyway (heck of a lot of good swerving did), and I punched through a guard rail going about 60 mph.  Took out ten or fifteen feet of the guard rail too.

My car came to a stop.  My first thought was, “I’m alive!”  My second thought was, “Get out of the car.”  So I did.  Some nice guys who had seen the whole thing called 911 while I kind of just stood in shock looking at my brand new car . . . hadn’t even had it three weeks . . . with the whole front end torn off.  Nice firemen and paramedics and police officers came right after, and the guy who had lost the ladder came back.  He felt so bad.  I just wanted to give him a hug, but my shoulder hurt too bad.

I went to my family doctor afterward, and he didn’t find anything seriously wrong.

All in all, it was pretty miraculous!  =D  I’m just really really sore right now.

But thank you to everyone who was thinking about me. 

Second place!!

Okay, so I get home tonight and see an envelope from SouthWest Writers Association, which I had submitted a buttload of stuff to, and I was all like–yeah, whatever, it’s probably another rejection letter (which I get a lot of those), but it wasn’t!!!  I won second place (and $30) for a poem!!  A POEM!!  What the heck??  My poetry stinks!

So either my poetry is better than I think it is . . . . or God is gracious and knew I was desperately in need of encouragement . . . . or there weren’t very many entries. 

Well . . . God is gracious no matter what.  LOL!!

Hooray!

I’ve heard of people STEALING books . . . .

. . . but I’ve NEVER heard of them giving them to us.

Get this.  This cracked me up.  We’ve been shelf reading at the library because it’s been a couple of years since we did it, and the whole place is a wreck.  Well our students found two books in our stacks — encyclopedias — that didn’t belong to us.  We know they aren’t ours because they don’t have our property stamp on them AND their call numbers have been hand written on their spines in white-out. 

Yes, in white-out.

So someone had these encyclopedias hanging around and decided they didn’t want them anymore, but instead of just donating them, they scribbled the call numbers down in correction fluid and stuck them up on the shelves.  And the call numbers aren’t even accurate!!

I found it hilarious, but odd things tend to amuse me.

 

It doesn’t make sense to me

Okay.  So what is the point of tearing people up anyway?  I think it’s mainly because people are flawed and imperfect, and they think that ripping each other up with words is going to help them feel like a better person.

Selfish, insecure people beat other people down.  They do it to make themselves feel superior, which (ironically) makes them look inferior.  There’s never a reason to personally attack someone else.  Never.  Not even if they hurt you.  You might feel motivated to attack someone, but motivation and reason aren’t always the same.  There’s no reason great enough to hurt someone else just to make yourself feel better.

We’ve got this issue going on at the library today, and I’m just amazed.  We’ve got this group of folks who don’t want this one thing to change, and I’m part of the committee that’s advocating the change.  I’m not the head of the committee, but I’m on it.  And this first group is attacking the head of our committee, saying really mean things and just being overly hostile.  It’s like being in kindergarten.  Scratch that.  It’s worse than kindergarten.  Most of the kindergarteners I know are willing to forgive each other.  It’s like being in junior high or high school (sorry guys, but you know it’s true).  One group of people can’t get their way, so they’re going to focus all their anger and frustration and pent-up-rage-due-to-selfish-insecure-motivation on one person who is doing the best she can with what she has.

It just royally pisses me off. 

I don’t like confrontations, but I’m not going to stand aside and let the committee head take this kind of abuse.  So I need to calm down and approach the whole situation rationally.  It won’t help anything to get angry at them for their anger.  It’s a vicious cycle that only ends with people being hurt and nothing being resolved.

The whole “Packin’ Heat” series is so applicable.  Really.  We just need to remember that life isn’t about us.  And if we can get off before we start acting only to please ourselves, things will glide a deal smoother for us (in the words of the immortal Captain Mal).  My trouble is facing angry people who have hurt the ones I care about.  Makes me want to go *rahr*. 

So I guess we’ll see if calm, rational logic will win out over passionate, uninformed rage.  Ironic when the passionate, uninformed rage comes from the educated people in the library.  LOL.

 

Wu-Cops

Okay.  So we call the police officers on campus “Wu-Cops” becuase they’re . . . well . . . wu-cops.  What else can you call them?  There have been many stories about them.  I’m certain they’re all wonderful people, but they can be slightly annoying.

(I’ve made friends with a lot of the cops here, but they’re WICHITA cops and not Wu-Cops . . . and there’s a difference.)

Well, the latest innovention in Wu-Cop-ness is — drum roll –

The Segway.

Yes.  Wu-Cops on a Segway.  (the big motorized scooters you stand on and drive around?)

I’ll see if I can find some pictures of it.  It’s hilarious.  It’s this big old Segway that has WSU Police written all over it.  It’s amazing.

Sorry, this just made me laugh.  And any other Shockers out there will be laughing too because it’s just another way for the Wu-Cops to get around without actually doing any exercise.

Getting older

My little brother is 24 today.  I just thought I’d pass that on.  One more year, and his car insurance gets a lot cheaper.  He’s 24 and he’s already worked for two different airplane manufacturers.

I’m very pleased with what I got him . . . . everything is purly frivolous, but he’ll enjoy them.

If you can’t be frivolous on your birthday, when can you be?

So this is what they’re really thinking . . . .

In response to my wondering why patrons feel the need to talk on their cell phones at the top of their voices inside the library, an unnamed friend (*cough, cough* Jon Dinsmore *cough, cough*) submitted his reasoning:

 

Because if I stopped using my cell phone, I’d get bored.
If I got bored, I’d start setting people on fire.
If I started setting people on fire, the library would burn down.
If the library burned down, you would lose your job.
If you lost your job, you’d have no money.
If you had no money, you’d become a homeless vagrant.
If you became a homeless vagrant, you’d start to steal to eat.
If you stole to eat, you’d eventually be shot in the back of the head while stealing a Twinkie.
If you got shot in the back of the head while stealing a Twinkie, you would die.

If you died, I would be sad.
If I became sad, I would give a mouse a cookie.
If I give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk.
If I give a mouse some milk, he’ll want some more.
If I give a mouse more milk, he’ll develop a taste for human blood.
If he develops a taste for human blood, he’ll become a vampire.
If he becomes a vampire, he’ll have to make some followers.
Now, if he makes some followers, they will need to feed.
If they feed too much, the National Guard will be called out.
If the National Guard is called out, they too will become fodder for the vampires!
If the National Guard fails, the President will call in a nuclear strike.
If a nuke is dropped, hundreds of thousands of people will die.
America will become a nuclear wasteland and collapse!
With no one to keep the rest of the world’s nukes in check, every crap-pot nation will launch their own!
Eventually the entire earth will be destroyed.
And that’s why I use my cell phone in the library.