Reading/Networking

Alright, well, I'm networking. Of the social-book-reading sites I've been looking at, Authonomy is definitely the most lively. It's made up mainly (or entirely?) of authors, and everyone seems happy to offer feedback and advice and be pretty nice about it in the process! Must be a British thing. The system is very reciprocal, and most people are being pretty upfront about that - you review my book and I'll review yours. I, however, don't have a book to contribute, but I'm still having fun offering up my opinions and seeing if they help. I've gotten a really positive response so far.

DailyLit I couldn't live without right now, but it still gets a mixed review. It has tons of classics, and tons of aspiring bestsellers, available to read free, and it'll send a little bite-sized read to your email every day at a specified time. The personalization options are fantastic, and it's so easy to get exactly what you want out of the function. Though I admit it's a bit weird reading Ulysses in 5-minute segments in the morning. But I've gotten further in reading it this way than I ever have before, so maybe there's something to be said for the method. On the other hand, the boards are pretty dead, and you get things like "27 comments, in 25 threads", where nobody is really talking to anyone. I think they should play up the book-club angle more, to get groups of people reading the same thing so they can talk about it.

Twitter I just can't figure out. It seems like people are making friends and forming lively communities, but there's no explanation of how this works anywhere on the site that I can find. Hmph.

Smashwords, Scribd, and Issuu I'm still working on... these sites all suffer a bit from being too geared towards writers and not accessible enough to people who want to be an audience. We'll see if I can figure them out any better in the days to come.

Analyzing the cool vote

Ripped straight from the Election Day Facebook Status headlines...

Regular cool: vote for Obama!!! Yay Obama!!!

Middle School cool: vote for Obama, in spirit.

Mechanized Grassroots Activism cool: MoveOn says, vote for Obama! Everyone's doing it!

Political Indifference cool: vote, or don't, or whatever, just please make the campaign ads stop!

Canadian cool: vote for Obama, my McGill student friends! America sucks, but we have a conservative leader, so we kind of suck too, so maybe you could be the awesome one, *just this one time*.

Cynical/Anarchist/Post-political cool: Obama is just another politician in sheep's clothing. Don't vote. Down with the state!

Issue-based Cynical cool: They both suck on gay marriage, the issue that will decide the future of the free world. Don't vote, but pray that McCain doesn't win, or if he does, that he doesn't die.

Ironic nihilist cool: vote for McCain

It's not polite to make personal remarks

In today's political commentary, we come to the subject of rude and irrelevant remarks about candidates. My upbringing has always caused me to assume that it's Republicans who do more of this - Democrats are supposed to be less racist, less sexist, more sensitive, more generally accepting of differences among people. So with all of that, it seems like they'd be less likely to make offensive slurs against the opposition candidate than Republicans are, right?

Well. This post is brought on by a facebook friend of mine, who in a casual anti-McCain post twice referred to McCain as "Pus-cheeks". What's worse, the post was ostensibly complaining about petty, irrelevant attacks on Obama at a time when people should be focusing on the economy and the war and those sorts of truly important things. So, um... at what level does making fun of McCain's cancer interface with which candidate is better to lead us out of a financial crisis and a military quagmire? Right.

Now, whenever I say anything about anything inappropriate that a democrat is saying about a republican, I seem to get this "well, they did it first! God." response. I appreciate that dumb redneck republicans are saying all sorts of astoundingly stupid things about Obama, and that that's wrong. But unless we're still in kindergarden, or unless you actually don't think these negative slurs are wrong, then that's no excuse for the other side to do it as well. I'm sorry. Good try though.

Anyway, I've noticed a disturbing trend in this election for Obama supporters to make fun of McCain's weird face - a result of an invasive operation to cure his melanoma, or his awkward arm movements and lurching walk - both lasting damage from war and torture wounds that weren't properly treated for the more than five years he was a prisoner of war. I am totally, completely creeped out by this, and I find it horrifying to hear people I think of as both kind and politically correct make casual comments about these things. Regardless of what you think of McCain as a person and a politician, remarks like these should never be made. It's *cancer*, and *torture*, people. What would you say if a Republican mocked somebody for one of those things?

It's kind of funny also that a lot of the Canadians who say things like this are supporters of the Liberal party of Canada, who raised such a huge stink when the Progressive Conservatives ran that ad making fun of Chretien's facial paralysis.

Now, I don't support McCain for president (or more accurately, I REALLY don't support Palin for president), but just because I don't want somebody to be president doesn't mean I have no standards for how they should be treated. Even if they wouldn't do the same for me. Because I love analogies, here's an analogy: Say you're in the SPCA looking for a dog, and you find a really great dog. But there's another dog there trying to get adopted, but it's kind of mean and traumatized and it snaps at you. And then somebody else in there starts teasing the mean dog and kicking at it. That person is bad enough, but what good are you if you don't say anything?

In conclusion, you're a pathetic and hypocritical sort of liberal/activist/whatever if you make hurtful personal remarks. Even if it's about the bad guys.

Totally tie-based election results

US of A - Obama, 2 for 2. I don't know who McCain's trying to impress with his selections. The powerful barber demographic, probably.


Canada - Dion, 1 for 2. His French debate tie was lovely. Nobody gets a point in the English debate. God.

Conspiracy theories

I'm on a roll coming up with theories about things today.

1. The whole "anything but Conservative" internet-voting-movement thing in Canada is actually a plot by the Bloc Quebecois to regain power.

Supporting this theory - (PS I love Gilles, this isn't anti Bloc at all, I don't even know how I feel about the parties, it's just a conspiracy theory please don't hate me!)
a) Gilles Duceppe's Twitter status is "Le Quebec n'a pas dit son dernier mot!" Sounds like a plot brewing if ever I heard one...
b)The Bloc, historically, lost a lot of ground in the last election to the Conservatives, as the Quebecois are moving away from the idea of a one-issue party and re-examining their party alliances.
c) The website "http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/", (a "wonderful little tool lets you put in your postal code and will tell you, based on the latest polls and data from previous elections, how to vote to keep Harper out of power. It ends up better for everyone who's not a conservative.") actually is encouraging Quebecois voters to go back to a strong Bloc majority (~54 of 75 seats Bloc, from the current 49 [which according to the trend, should continue to drop]). Furthermore, this trend is masked by the site, which mentions nothing of the sort and makes it very difficult to find out what the overall results of their voting suggestions would be. Suspicious? ...Suspicious!

2. Dion said that election debates get his adrenaline pumping. Look for some hot Dion trouser action, coming your way on prime time tomorrow!


More to come, never fear!