If all the emails I get are true

then the Today Show really needs to get some new subject matter. I swear, they talk at least once a week about how Microsoft is paying people to forward emails.

The Best Little S'morehouse in Texas

-A private club for gentlebears-

Wide Awake

by David Levithan

When I first heard about Wide Awake, I immediately put it on my Amazon.com wishlist. I really really liked Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, and the premise of this novel was just plain intriguing: some time in the not-too-distant future, the first gay Jewish president is elected, and it's all thanks to the Jesus Revolution. See, after the Reign of Terror--in which Americans were convinced to fear everything and everyone--and the Greater Depression, a bunch of Christian churches started to ask, "What would Jesus really do?" and they decided that he would love everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, social status, or politics. So gradually the American political climate changes until we get to the present, where the first gay Jewish president has been elected. Except there are still those who cling to old prejudices, one of them being the governor of Kansas, who demands a recall of his state's ballots, therefore putting the president-elect's electoral status in jeopardy.

So I liked the book's premise as much as I knew I would--particularly the way Levithan plays with the intermingling of politics and religion. The problem is that this seems to be the extent of Levithan's unique slant on the topic. A review I read a couple months ago praised Levithan for writing a novel about politics without using the words "Republican," "Democrat," "Conservative," or "Liberal," but regardless of what words he uses, it's clear that this book is talking about Conservatives and Liberals, and the heavily overstated moral of the story is that Liberals are Good and Conservatives are Bad. Which is nice, but thank you very much, I already tend to believe that and I'm not interested in reading fiction that does nothing but pander to my prejudices. I appreciate that you're working so hard to challenge traditional notions of sexuality, Mr. Levithan, but how about doing something to challenge traditional notions of politics beyond flipping the Good Guy and Bad Guy roles (if it can even be argued that you're doing that)? Like, maybe, just perhaps, it's not quite so black-and-white?

The one redeeming moment of this book comes when the main characters are on a bus to Kansas and the fifty-something adults (corresponding more or less to my generation, thirty years from now) stand up and start singing Lauryn Hill's "Everything is Everything." A beautiful moment that almost made the rest of the simplistic-politics-over-story read worth it.

I don't like being teased

Last week Blogger started inviting me to switch to Beta. Only when I clicked on the link it told me I couldn't, the only explanation being a link to a default explanation that says blogs with more than a couple thousand posts can't make the switch yet. Hello? Three hundred fifty-something is not a couple thousand. At any rate, the invitation disappeared after a few days, but now it's reappeared, and it still won't let me actually do it. I'm going to be the last kid on my block using the old Blogger, and everyone will make fun of me. The jerks.

Twelve Fobs of Christmas Delayed by Facts

One of the clearest childhood Christmas memories I have is of sneaking up to someone's doorstep in the dark, dropping a package--with cutout magazine letters describing the contents thereof--on the doorstep, then ringing the doorbell and running like crazy to get back to the family car without being spotted. Nowadays you get arrested by the FBI for such behavior, but in that innocent age it was mostly overlooked. At least a couple Christmases during my formative years, my family did the twelve days of Christmas for another family, either because they were in need or just because we liked them. Starting twelve days before Christmas and every day thereafter until Christmas, we would get some kind of gift to match the day, come up with a clever line or two to decorate the brown paper grocery bag, and make the delivery each night without getting caught. I enjoyed this not so much for the warm fuzzy feeling of having done something nice as for the piped-up adrenaliney feeling of being sneaky. A couple years ago, FoxyJ and I did something similar for a family that lived upstairs from us, and I enjoyed it just as much.

So this year, when Tolkien Boy challenged Foblog contributors to post Christmasy things for our fellow Fobs, and upon counting I realized that there are 12 Fobs besides me, I decided that I must go against TB's plea not to and create the Twelve Fobs of Christmas. As I got ready to do so, though, I came up against a nagging question I've had for years--does the Twelve Days of Christmas start on the 13th and go to the 24th, or does it go from the 14th to the 25th?

Rather than randomly decide on one or the other, I decided to look it up. After some in-depth research of the type that only an experienced information professional such as myself could perform, I found that the Twelve Days does not start on the 13th or the 14th. Rather, the Twelve Days of Christmas run from the night of the 25th through the night of January 5th, otherwise known as (duh) Twelfth Night. January 6th, then, is Epiphany, or as I and other people who've lived in Spain know it, Dia de los Reyes.

It troubles me to no end to know that all those years my family was doing it wrong. But alas, there's nothing I can do now but press forward in the light of the truth. So, now that I am no longer deceived (you might say I've had an epiphany), you can watch for my oh-so-clever ode to my fellow Fobs to appear nightly on the Foblog between December 25th and January 5th. And to all the rest of you who aren't official Fobs, well, I'm sure I love you too.

Amazon.com Speaks Out Against Cruelty to Stockings

Bad Idea, Good Idea

Bad idea: Waking up in the middle of the night to scream at Mommy for no apparent reason.

Good idea: Waking up in the middle of the night to tell Daddy you have to go potty. (Hurray for S-Boogie!)