Freshening up

As the snow falls—looks like about six inches so far, and I'm sure there will be more throughout the night—I did some reading and then took some time to change the look here a bit.

What do you think? Bear in mind that if you tell me you hate it, think it's the ugliest thing you've ever seen, that it induces projectile vomiting in you...I'm not going to change it for a while. I like it. I've always dug the turquoise/black combo. I find it very retro, and I even like it when it comes to clothes. (I also like pink and black.) So I'm sorry if you hate it, but I'm not going to do anything about it. Ha! I do like feedback when I try something different, and I quickly dropped the failed experiment of spacer bars when I tried them a while back. A few people said meh, not really necessary, don't bother. I agreed. And the big change came when I dropped Comic Sans on the advice of Milwaukee Dan #2. I believe he said it looked kind of juvenile. *gasp* Kiss of death! I am eternally grateful, Dan, that you saved me from myself.

It looks to be a quiet weekend at Nutwood, with lots of snow (and lots of reading). The original plan was to go to the ND-St. John's basketball game, but then I found out that the Colts are playing at the same time Saturday evening! Drat! It worked out okay, though. Tickets were swapped for another game, everybody's happy, all is well. Now we'll see if my Colts can win and advance in the playoffs. They're favored by about a touchdown, but it's been a tough season with numerous players injured. They seem to be finding their groove lately, so I'm hoping that will continue in the playoffs.

A few further remarks about my previous entry concerning the censoring of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I can in no way, shape, or form justify the censorship of that novel, which is part of our history. I honestly would rather not see it taught. Let parents who love books teach it to their kids. It is a disgrace and disrespectful to one of our greatest writers to revise his book in such a manner. I find it as bad as Texas trying to minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in our country's beginning in their textbooks. I don't know about anyone else, but I've been having such discussions for most of my life, and continue to have them with friends of all stripes. Sanitizing Huck Finn isn't teaching anything. Removing the vernacular from the context of the novel results in nothing more than a fucking Hardy Boys book. It is so much more than that, and deserves to be read and discussed in its entirety.

Anyone who has read me for a while knows that I am virulently anti-censorship; I find it ridiculous that some of our classic books have been removed from the classroom because of epithets or situations deemed unacceptable by a very vocal group of fundamentalists and misguided fools. I just don't see how gutting these books and then offering them up like pasteurized pablum is helping the situation. I hope this will lead to a greater dialogue about what our schools are allowed to teach.

I have to chuckle, though, because I'm guessing that Mark Twain would observe this brouhaha with disgusted amusement. I also think that he would find a certain evil enjoyment in knowing that over a century later, he's still being talked about and still causing controversy. If there were a literary afterlife, I can imagine Twain and Ambrose Bierce sitting down and hoisting a few while they laugh at our idiotic prudishness.

We really are ridiculous. You know that, don't you? Laugh or be damned. That’s how I feel about it, and I choose to laugh.