Things that I should not have to read before breakfast

Remember back when Phillip Pullman was making waves because schools wanted to do background checks on authors before they visited the kiddies? Once again humanity has failed us and children's author K.P. Bath has been convicted of possessing child pornography.

So, yea, maybe background checks are a good idea. Maybe also a hard drive search for everyone? And congratulations to the news, for icking me out before breakfast.

Bad romance

I swear, I'm getting back into the swing of things soon, but in the meantime: some people I think misunderstand what "romance" means. For me, and this is just an opinion, I don't include Josef Fritzl in the "romantic" category. But some might disagree!

Cops bust woman, 74, for pouring mayo in book drop

You heard me. Oh, you want more?

BOISE, Idaho -- Police in Idaho think they might have solved a yearlong condiment crime spree. Authorities said a 74-year-old Boise woman arrested after pouring mayonnaise in the Ada County library's book drop box is a person of interest in at least 10 other condiment-related crimes.

Check it out!

Jesus versus Twilight

Who will win?

When murder messes up your book launch

Sometimes writing the book, getting it agented, getting it published and getting to press isn't the problem. No, sometimes your co-author get accused of attempted murder just as the book comes out, and that really tanks the whole thing.

Author estates: Super complicated

We all know how effed Steig Larsson's estate is. Well, it turns out his problem is not so uncommon. The answer, of course, is to 1) write a will, 2) never produce anything anyone cares about, or 3) leave it all to me, and I will milk every last penny out of your blood, sweat, and tears.

Self-pubbing apps

Would you like to self publish, but skip that messy "book" stage? Well, you're in luck, friend. Now you can self publishing to an iPhone app! This will work because:

An iPhone might not be the ideal format for reading, but it gets points just for turning up. As Andrews puts it: “People carry their phones constantly, so you’re never stuck without something to read.”

I love getting points for just showing up.

Outer space, weirder than you thought

But not just because of the space itself. Sometimes the human aspect is the weirdest. Mary Roach's next book is going to be about all the shit we don't talk about when going into space, and some of it is just weird.

Sure, being in space makes you hotter, but, if you're a Japanese astronaut, they make you origami 1,000 paper cranes to see how you deal with boredom and monotony. The plus is, you get a wish after the thousand paper cranes. The downside is, anyone who doesn't wish for Sadako to live is a fucking monster, and doesn't get to go on the shuttle. What a traumatizing story. Thus concludes today's chapter of "For real, you gave that to children?"

Wheeling, dealing, and busting ghosts

I'm taking the day off because, well, I am lazy. In exchange, I bring you library support and Ghostbusters:

Day off: earned.

The bodice rippers of architecture

An awesome new collaboration between romance publisher Mills & Boon and the UK's National Trust has inspired Meredith Blake to consider similar collaborations in the US.

She says it might be a little difficult, but, hello, sweeping plantations of the South! Ranches and stately northern farms! ...Other places! We can do for the Walt Disney Concert Hall what Dan Brown did for the Vatican.

Twitter and grammar, things that make me vomit edition

I have a personal policy, that involves eschewing e-contact with all people who use text speak, can't spell, and abuse emoticons (you get one per conversation. This is a strict rule that is enforced with real-life slaps once we finally meet up). That said, I choose to avoid the bad spellers (Firefox has built in spell check. Use it, please), the terrible grammarians, and emoticon abusers. I don't seek them out or, God forbid, try to fix their mistakes, like these Twitter grammar jerks.

And yes, I realize that someone who has a blog dedicated to commenting and occasionally judging stuff (who, me?) is throwing rocks from a glass house, but seriously, this is like going to visit the monkeys at the zoo and complaining when they throw shit. It's what monkeys do. Sure, there are some non-shit flinging monkeys, and some grammatically correct Twitter-ers, but not many.

Plus, seriously, it's like bailing out the Titanic with a thimble. Smoochy was wrong: you can't change the world, and you also can't make a dent.

Ground black pepper is decidedly not "ground black people"

A misprint in an Australian cookbook (in which "people" was substituted for "pepper" of the "ground black" variety) cost $20k to fix. Now, this super sucks, and is one of the worse possible typos. The publisher's response?

"When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up, but proofreading a cook-book is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable."

Of course it's forgivable! It's not like you pay proofreaders to keep you from having to recall for misprints.

Professor of vice, scholar of debauchary

It turns out academics do more fun stuff that I had previously thought. First we found this analysis of the ethics of vampirism (and part 2 is up!), and now we have Mara L. Keire of Oxford, who writes about American red light districts. She says:

I wanted to write a history of American drug culture, but I soon discovered that if I wanted to talk about the regulation of drugs, I really needed to understand the regulation of alcohol. And to understand the limitations on drinking, I needed to grapple with people’s attitudes toward saloons. Once I started reading the anti-saloon literature, I soon realized that reformers were more concerned about men drinking with prostitutes than with workers grabbing a beer. In other words, step by step I found that I was studying red-light districts: the environment for vice, not simply vice itself.

So. Smart. Please be my friend!

Young explorers, unite for nature

Things everyone loves this time of year: rediscovering that there is life outside, enjoying said life outside, adventures. For the tiny people around, this isn't always a "rediscovery" so much as a first time discovery. But how can we interest them in the great outdoors while secretly educating them?

This list of nature focused picture books is the equivalent of hiding carrots in cookies. They'll never know that education has hit them square between the eyes.