Wiping away my bibliophilic tears...

I just heard that today is the last day of Reading Rainbow. My response, in a word, is, "Nooooooooo!!!" My further response, in several more words, is this tribute blog post.

As a nerdy young child, and an unabashed bookworm, I loved Reading Rainbow. It was one of my favorite shows, although its premise was to teach kids to love reading, so there was a strong element of preaching to the choir. But do you have any idea how nice it is, as a nerdy young child, to have your love of reading affirmed and hear about new, good books to read? Trust me, it was wonderful.

According to the NPR article, the show's getting canned because no one's willing to pony up the several hundred thousand dollars to keep it going. Never before have I so fervently wished I had several hundred thousand dollars lying around, so that I could fund the show myself. I actually have long wanted to start a children's literacy foundation, if I ever did strike it rich, so this would be in keeping with my prior pipe dreams.

Supposedly, market research has shown that what PBS needs to be doing is teaching kids how to read, not why read. Nobody's paying me thousands of dollars for my totally non-researched opinion, but I still call bullshit. It seems to me that kids will learn how to do anything they damn well want to, so long as they actually want to. The problem, in my opinion, is not so much mechanics as it is motivation. But hey, what do I know. (Side note: you can still pay me thousands of dollars for that opinion, if you want. I have a PayPal account and everything.)

I was rather gratified to find, when I tweeted my distress, that others were as sad as I to see the show go. It's been on the air for 26 years, which means in all likelihood that I was watching it when it first started airing, as I have been a PBS fan since I was still in diapers. Granted, it's been many years since I watched it, but my fondness for the show is still firmly rooted in my heart.

This is a cool YouTube tribute that another tweep posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLTDoJea2Q

So, thanks, Reading Rainbow, for brightening a young bookworm's days, and thanks, LeVar Burton, for doing such a great job all these years and getting kids interested in good books. You will be missed. One can only hope PBS might release some episodes on DVD so I can share the love with the kids I plan to have someday.

full of win & awesome

I do a lot of ranting on here, so it's time for some things to make you (okay, me) laugh. Here's a collection of links I find hilarious.

I am inspired by this super-awesome post by Mediaite.com comparing the media world to the world of Harry Potter, which I saw today and is just too funny: http://www.mediaite.com/online/media-muggles-harry-potter/

Cracked.com has some similarly hilarious articles. These are a couple of recent favorites. (If you're offended by crude language - well, you probably wouldn't be reading this site, but you definitely should not read Cracked. Or, well, any of my other recommendations, except the Mediaite article, which is family-friendly.)

6 Animals That Can Get You High: http://www.cracked.com/article/81_6-animals-that-can-get-you-high/

One of my favorite posts of all time - 7 Classic Star Wars Characters Who Totally Dropped the Ball: http://www.cracked.com/article_17546_7-classic-star-wars-characters-who-totally-dropped-ball.html (Sheer genius.)

And possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen, the literal video version of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA&feature=PlayList&p=A095CDB461A1FEED&index=29

Okay, enough with the post links, on to my favorite smartass websites.

Texts from Last Night http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/ Occasionally scary, more often hysterically funny. Makes you glad college is over more often than it makes you nostalgic for the good old days.

STFU Parents http://stfuparents.tumblr.com/ Taking toilet humor to a whole new level. Makes me feel extremely lucky that my friends with babies have way, way better taste and self-editing skills than the people featured on this site.

Awkward Family Photos http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ Look on the right-hand side for most popular posts & read the Thanksgiving letter - you will cry with laughter, I promise.

Passive-Aggressive Notes http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/ People are amazing. Truly. Not always in a good way.

There, I Fixed It. http://thereifixedit.com/ See PAN comment, above.

Stuff White People Like http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ It's funny, and true.

I Can Has Cheezburger http://icanhascheezburger.com/ Because cats are endlessly entertaining.... probably due to taking themselves so very seriously.

Cakewrecks http://www.cakewrecks.com/ Needs no explanation.

And last, but most definitely not least...

It's My World, Ur Just A Squirrel http://www.thesabs.com/ Written by one of my favorite tweeps, @SnarkySabs, she culls the interwebs for bizarre news articles and adds her own fabulously acerbic take on them.

grrrr...

I'll admit it: I've developed a Pavlovian response to hearing or reading the name "Michael Vick". It brings out a side of me I don't really like - that evil little part of me that likes to dream up extremely inhumane punishments for him. As much as I'm horrified and sickened by what he did, I'd like to think my belief that no one should be treated brutally could stand up to this situation. But I'm sorely tested.

There are several issues involved for me. First, by default I root for Philadelphia sports teams. So the fact that he's going to play for the Eagles makes me extremely unhappy - like to the point of nausea. I've never been a big football fan anyway, so it's not that hard for me to walk away from them. Thank GOD he's not a baseball player, because I am a lifelong, die-hard Phillies fan and would've been subjected to a massive crisis of faith over that one.

Second, I would like to think of myself as a fair person. I believe strongly in justice. And while there's justice and then there's justice, he did go bankrupt and spend 18 months in prison (but I'll bet you nobody tried to make him their bitch - now THAT would be justice. See? There's that evil ugly side of me I don't like. Rape is never deserved, but then I kind of think in this situation, it might have made him realize just how heinous his actions were. Argh.)

It raises real questions for me about what justice is - the whole "eye for an eye" thing versus our more "civilized" modern justice system. I think the animal lovers like me really want to see him suffer physically and helplessly, like the treatment to which he subjected (or condoned the subjection of) those poor dogs. But on the other hand, I didn't think the terrorists in Guantanamo Bay should've been tortured, and that's not necessarily all that different from this; terrorists also subject the innocent to fear, pain and suffering without any choice on the victims' part.

I was discussing this with my brother last weekend, and his point was that Vick served his time and is fulfilling the rest of his court-mandated punishment, and it's not fair to keep punishing him for the rest of his life; plus, since the guy apparently has no other skills than playing football, he can't really earn a living unless he's allowed to play.

In theory, from a legal standpoint, I can understand that this is generally a reasonable position. But emotionally, I still want to have Vick covered in honey and set fire-ants on him.

Someone - I forget who - once said something like, 'We never know the strength of our principles until we have to apply them to the treatment of our enemies.' So, while I don't really joke about wanting Vick to be painfully punished for his wrongdoing, I'm forced to admit ...ugh, I can't believe I'm even saying this... please don't hate me... that he probably should be given the chance to a) earn a living and b) make up for the horrible, despicable, evil, evil, evil things he did.

I feel like vomiting and then scrubbing my mouth out with soap. But I feel like I have to stand by my belief in justice, no matter how much I detest the situation to which it applies.

I think it would be easier if 'earning a living' for him didn't involve a six-figure salary, but again, I keep coming back to the underlying principles involved. It's like that story about Winston Churchill, where he (jokingly, we assume) asked a woman if she'd sleep with him for five million pounds. "My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... We would have to discuss terms, of course..." she replied. Then he asked her if she'd sleep with him for five pounds. "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" she exclaimed. "Madam, we have already established that," he answered. "Now we are just haggling over the price." In Vick's case, his only real skill-set happens to involve stupidly high salaries and national celebrity. Dammit. Couldn't he be taught to flip burgers at Mickey-D's or some other minimum-wage occupation?

I just read an article in which Vick says he's grateful for a second chance and is going to use his community service to "help more animals than he's hurt". If he really means that, then he ought to be given the chance to do it. And if he doesn't do it, THEN can we poke him with sharp sticks and set parts of his body on fire temporarily? Because that would feel a lot more like justice to me.

Calling all smartasses...

The world needs more laughter, don't you think? I myself like to bring a little levity to the situation whenever I can, largely through my smartass sense of humor.

(Fortunately, I find myself rampantly hilarious, so that makes it easier on me (though not necessarily the poor sods who have to listen to me all the time). Of course, I am also notoriously easily entertained.)

But I have these recurring wishes for more smartassedness in the world. For example, I don't even know how many times I've been typing in 'hotmail.com' and snickered over the thought that someone should really offer 'homail.com'. (Yeah, like I said: easily entertained.)

But how is it that in a world where every moronic & useless product on the planet has its own website, an email site like 'homail' doesn't exist? I guess that's not really one of those demographics people self-label much. Maybe you could set up fake accounts for annoying bitches in your life, sort of like my idea of 'twatter.com'.

Bear in mind, these would not be porn sites, just venting-about-people-that-need-to-be-smacked-upside-the-head sites.

I swear, I'm not as vengeful as I sound. I just amuse myself by verbally or mentally lacerating sucky people with the worst insults I can think of, then move on.

Anyway, I can't be the only one who has ideas for sites that enable the smartass in you. Anybody have other suggestions?