nineteen eighty four September 18, 2008

**** i fully support the extradition of the following list of smut from the fragile minds of our youth, with the single exception of aristophanes, who was in fact born nearly 500 years before christ.
-r

(Saw this on Joy Harjo’s Blog and decided to forward)

The following is a list of books that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tried to get banned when she
was mayor of Wasilla.

This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla
Library Board. When the librarian refused, then-Mayor Palin tried to get her fired.

As you will note, the list contains works by, among many others, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and
Stephen King. It also includes the Harry Potter books and Webster’s dictionary.

It speaks to
the underlying truths of Governor Palin’s political philosophy, which may or may not be that of
the Republican party.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K.

Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K.

Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K.

Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K.

Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya AngelouImpressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.

Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.

Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C.

Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William ShakespeareThe New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and
Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S.

by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em November 27, 2007

my fellow americans, as founding and lonely member of the newly re-furbished bull moose party, I feel it is my patriotic duty and responsibility to provide the eager and thoughtful public with a voting guide to the 2008 election. many are calling this the most important election of our time. I couldn’t agree more. we are riding the crest of a new age, and everything is at stake. that being said, I probably will not vote. aside from the sickening sensation of marching into one of those awful little booths with all my sheeple neighbors who have somehow avoided the devastating realization that our democracy is a facade that leeches off the good intentions of the feeble minded and pits us against each other and the rest of the world in a delicate series of class, race, and territorial warfare, i’ll probably have something better to do that day. and yet somehow I feel more than qualified to influence your sample ballot. I guess its also important to mention that I haven’t read a newspaper, turned on a tv or a radio, or actively participated in any sort of political banter in over six months. ok, so your ballot should look something like this:

President:

Rudolph Giuliani

he’s still running, right?

the level of audacity, or even irony of putting a woman, or a black man into office is most enticing to me. and with both of their campaigns being bankrolled by the same machines that bulldozed our current fearless leader into office, it seems quite probable. but for the sake of wiping the slate clean, in preparation for a new world full of genderless, raceless flipper babies, I think we need to let a tired old white man with an enlarged prostate finish the job he started. im not sure if it was that beautiful day in September ‘01, watching his bitch ass running away from the crumbling second tower of the world trade center (a news camera spontaneously shooting him from the front), or maybe it was a couple months later when he asked the city of new york to tack on an extra year to his mayoral term, but it became overwhelmingly apparent that this was the man with the perfect combination of dimwittedness and gusto to lead us straight into the apocalypse. he’s a tiger, man. aside from his heroic speeches atop piles of rubble and burning corpses, let us not forget his efforts to turn times square’s ho strut into corporate disneyland, the anonymous narc hotline, that allows you to rat out your neighbor for not taking out their trash or being a terrorist, and of course his relentless endorsement and protection of the murderous thugs that is the nypd. not to mention, that adorable lisp of his. “go yankeeths!”

is it a coincidence that the last wintery days of our next president’s term line up so perfectly with the end of the mayan calendar? yes it is. a delectable coincidence.

depending on where you live, theres probably a whole plethora of local issues designed to filter money into a not-so-local spending pool, and others to simply remind you that the only thing worth trusting is your fear and hate. gay marriage? I might respond, “could marriage be any gayer?” immigration? “can an invisible border contain the fires of satan?”

i’m calling bullshit on everything and everyone. if you really want my advice, start collecting lots of tin foil and poppers, and write pretty songs about birds and animals that don’t often get mentioned in songs so that there may be an oral record of their existence after they’re gone. i’m just sayin..