Ursula is rallying the troops!

If you are a published, professional author and disagree with the Authors Guild being given the right to negotiate a deal with google to scan COPYRIGHTED materials and put them up on the web for free download…

Ursula Le Guin has a few words to say, and hopes you will join her.

I am but a foot soldier but am doing my best to spread the word.

Please go read, sign, and keep the message going.

Thank you.

EDITED TO ADD:  While support from anyone is welcome, the fact is that her need at this time is for people to post if they are professional novelists or nonfiction book authors who support themselves at least in part by the publication of books.  If she gets overwhelmed with responses from people who are simply wanting to say, “I agree with you,” it will make her project grow beyond the ability to deal with it.  Thanks.

Really. No conspiracy? Color me skeptical.

In these two blog entries, Daphne describes the situation illustrated below–reproducing great art but making it skinnier, because, you know, it should be to look right.  In the first entry, she expresses what seems to be dismay when she says, “…when I noticed a trend that stopped me and sent me furiously turning pages back, saying “oh my god! Look what they’re doing!”

But in the second she says, “False alarm, no harm, no foul.”  Or rather, “Basically, there is no conspiracy. These are NOT a deliberate and wanton desecration of the original artworks; the sculptors and model-makers are “innocent victims” of the system and not deliberately trying to persecute women or harm anyone’s body-image.”

No, the “innocent victims” have been exposed to too many Bratz and Barbie dolls.

Somehow her initial dismay became apology for the industry in which she works.  I guess we all have to cover our own arses.

But still, desecration is desecration, and in my view, that’s a desecration of glorious art and the perpetrators are assholes.

Feel free to disagree.

What can I say?

Other than, hypocrisy knows no bounds….

From today’s Huffington Post:

Remember Clean Flix? It’s the Utah-based DVD business that was a favorite of conservative politicians and an anathema to the studios because it edited feature films to remove or alter content deemed inappropriate.

The company’s activities sparked a number of lawsuits, including one huge one filed by 16 prominent directors, including Steven Spielberg and Robert Redford, and entertainment studios such as Disney, Sony, Universal, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox. In 2006, Hollywood won its copyright claims against Clean Flix and the company recently shut down, supposedly due to the industry’s legal force.

Well, cover your eyes for this story. Clean Flix founder Daniel Thompson has just been arrested and is accused of having sex with underaged girls.

Excuse me while I laugh my arse off.

I’m sure it’s the fault of all those Hollywood sex scenes he was forced to see when he was saving the rest of the world from their evil influence by editing them out of movies.

Shit Weasels and Assholes

So the inevitable email came.

The one titled, “It’s official.”

The one from my friend saying that her son’s tour in Iraq is extended another three months.

She concluded,

“I have totally exhausted my normally extensive vocabulary of expletives.”

Some of us offered to help her out, some with words like hope and love, others a bit less gracious, but the very best was shit weasels.

Feel free to offer a few of your own.

A shared load is often lighter.

And of course, there is always Shakespeare.

Brave, brave soldiers under the command of the Shit Weasel in Chief.

Fuck, I hate this shit.

Cruella de Real?

I don’t like fake fur, anyway. I mean, why fake? If I can’t have real chinchilla, why do I want fake?

(I don’t think that’s the PETA attitude, is it, hmm.)

But this just makes me sick.

The Humane Society of the United States said it purchased coats from reputable outlets, such as upscale Nordstrom, with designer labels — Andrew Marc, Tommy Hilfiger, for example — and found them trimmed with fur from domestic dogs, even though the fur was advertised as fake.

“It’s an industrywide deception,” said Kristin Leppert, the head of the Humane Society’s anti-fur campaign.

Yes, believe it or not, Some ‘fake fur’ includes dog hair, animal rights group says.

Most of the fur came from China.

Why am I not surprised?

We stopped buying anything made in China a few years ago. American companies (WalMart, I’m looking at you) pressure their subcontractors and suppliers to go to China to get the cheapest prices. Meanwhile, entire industries in the US are shutting down. Some have said, “Let the Chinese do it; Americans need to regroup and redefine ourselves.”

Well, I’m starting out by defining myself this way:

I buy American if at all possible. When we’re standing at Home Depot comparing tools made in the US against tools made in China, the Resident Storm Chaser almost always thinks the American made are better quality to justify the extra expense. And the extra expense isn’t always that much. And even if it is? American. And if we do end up buying merchandise made elsewhere, it’s not China. (No, we don’t shop at WalMart, which was created as an “everything made in the USA” store but now is “everything is made in China” store. And when it was created, I didn’t think it was a big deal that everything was made in the US, but now? Oh hell yes, I think it’s a big deal.)

But. Back to the subject at hand.

Do the designers really not know that the fake fur isn’t fake? Is there truly nobody in their company who knows the deal with the devil they made?

And are there really that many Cruellas out there who just don’t give a damn?

Good lord, I hope not.

If you want dog fur to keep you warm?

Use the whole dog.

The love comes free.