The Sound of Contrition

Upon allegations that Amazon's CEO took a "Big Brother" approach to the recent backdoor deleting of Kindle downloadable books like "1984" and "Animal Farm," Jeff Bezos issued this apology:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of ‘1984’ and other novels on Kindle,” the Amazon chief executive said in a post on Thursday on the Kindle Community discussion forum.

“Our ‘solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles,” Bezos wrote.

“It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received,” he said. “We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”

YEAH. Now that's what an apology sounds like. Are you listening, AIG?

Go Ahead, Play With Your Food

Remember these magnetic toys you personalize with iron filings? Now you can do the same with your food on Food Face dinner plates. Look how easy it is to use french fries to make "angry eyes"! Only $9.99.

And That's The Way He Was

Crafts & Hobbies #64 Zines

I'm not sure I get this one. I read the post, looked at most of the links and here's what I know: Zines are self-published, self-edited, homemade magazines for people who have way too much time on their hands and are immersed in a subculture of highly self-indulgent interests that often go beyond popular tastes...sometimes waaay beyond. It sounds like some libraries are catering to these interests in order to appeal to a younger, probably college undergraduate patronage, which is fine depending on the overall demographics of the library's customers. In our library's case, this would probably be a waste of shelf space. I know this because I help choose display ideas and, depending on the subject, the display either gets emptied quickly...or will sit on the shelf longer than Michael Jackson's body has. In our Young Adult display, if the book doesn't have something to do with vampires, teen angst or puberty curiosity, it's a no go. Zines seem to be very intellectual, probably not a little geeky and a tad....strange. Other than a few homeschoolers, we don't get that type at our library (staff, yes...patrons...no). I'm not saying that they're not great examples of creative literature, just that they seem to have a specific focus audience that not all libraries attract. Would I ever make a zine? Perhaps in my youth when the world was bigger and I was egocentric enough to think anyone cared about my personal passions. In fact, why are you reading this, anyway?

We Choose The Moon

I can hardly believe that it's been 40 years since my parents called us into the living room to huddle around the black and white console television to watch Neil Armstrong step on the lunar surface. I had just turned 8 years old and was not thrilled about watching anything on TV that wasn't cartoons but now I'm glad Mom forced me. I remember Mom and Dad being awestruck and saying things like, "Wow..." and "Hard to believe..." as the fuzzy events unfolded on the screen. Kids today would never sit through the poor reception and garbled audio that recorded this historic event ("Does that come in HD??") but considering the fact that these moving pictures came from THE FREAKING MOON - 240,000 miles away - it was pretty amazing. But those were amazing times here in Space City when space travel became so commonplace that only 5% of the population cared and very few people watched the events leading up to putting man on the moon. Since my uncle worked for NASA as an aeronautics engineer, our family followed closely the folks who were my uncle's neighbors, co-workers and friends. Mom dutifully collected mission patches, stamps, first-day covers and other paraphernalia associated with the lunar missions. Later, I would go to Hawaii with my uncle as he worked on Apollo 15 and I even boarded the USS Okinawa, the aircraft carrier which recovered the actual command module after it splashed down in the Pacific. Today, kids (under age 40) don't seem to care much about the risks these people took with very limited technology, by our standards, in order to broaden human knowledge. They take it for granted that cell phones can reach out to a person on the other side of the planet in less time than it takes to write down their name on paper. Technology has definitely spoiled us. Sadly, it's also numbed us to the wonders of things never before seen by human eyes. Is it possible for kids to be amazed anymore by anything? For those of you who still remember what it's like to say, "Wow..." and "Hard to believe..." go to We Choose The Moon to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing and experience a really cool interactive site. It "launched" July 16, the realtime anniversary of Apollo 11's launch and follows the mission hour by hour exactly as it happened. You can listen to audio from astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins as they communicate with mission control in Houston and also visit a link to hear President John F. Kennedy's famous speech (made at Rice University here in Houston in 1962) about why we chose to go to the moon (paraphrased), "...not because it's easy but because it's hard." I wonder if kids can relate to that sentiment nowadays.

Birthday Gift Idea #2: I Have You Now, Young Toastmaker

Whether you want the Light...or Dark Side of breakfast.

Sith happens.

Crafts and Hobbies #63: Digital Scrapbooking

This is actually pretty cool. I went to Scrapblog and took the tutorial and found it very accessible. I don't have a lot of experience with picture editing other than a brief fling with PictureIt, which I don't think even exists anymore. I also made a lot of digital greeting cards with Hallmark software so I do understand the basics of photo manipulation, cropping, cut-outs, etc. This web-based (which is terrific) program was very simple to use. You do have to register if you want to save your pictures like the one I made of Sam. The whole thing took me about 5 minutes to make but about 10 minutes of registering and accessing my Flickr account to add to this blog. I have great respect for anyone who has the fortitude and determination to keep a scrapbook of any kind (digital or not) of their loved ones. I still have unopened film cans from when my son was 5 years old (he'll be 20 in Nov.)! Who has time to do all this when your kids are young and the memory is fresh in your mind? By the time you DO have the free moments to work on it, who can remember where and when the heck that photo was taken....and who IS that kid, anyway? I'll stick with the photo memory book in the old noggin. No one else can see it but I have immediate access to sweet pictures of my precious baby anytime I want them. It's worked for me so far and I'm not THAT old yet. It's a good thing I can still recall the time.... waittaminute, what was I talking about again?? Dang it.

Birthday Gift Idea #1: Today Is A Good Day To Type

Klingon keyboard to compose angry missives to petaQ hu-man Sarah Palin.

Summer Camp Is At Lake....Whaaaaa??

Camp logo shirts will be available only in XXX-Large this year.

The Truth About Bottled Water

After you watch this video you may rethink buying bottled water.

1. It's expensive.

2. There's no flouride - essential for healthy teeth.

3. Wasteful packaging pollutes environment (unless you recycle).

4. It's not necessarily cleaner, safer or better tasting than tap.

Crafts and Hobbies #62: Decoupage

When I hear the word "decoupage," I can't help but think of those Victorian-style flowers Modge Podged onto wooden trays. Not really my style. But I guess the craft can also be a work of art if you consider these really beautiful poster chairs from Jonathan Fong. I think they're very hip and trendy and I'd probably try some from posters of my fave artist, Marc Chagall. The last time I decoupaged was probably in the '60's when my sister and I used magazine pictures to decorate cigar boxes to be used as treasure or jewelry containers. Those were days aimed at keeping busy over the summer but also an attempt to flex our artistic chops. In between papier maché-ing balloons to be painted and made into masks, and decorating cardboard boxes with racing car flames, there were clay figures and pencil sketches. I was fortunate to have an artist sister and artist/teacher aunt as family members to help guide me but I wouldn't hesitate to dive into a simple project like this without supervision. It's basically glueing pictures onto a smooth surface and covering it with a sealant. You just have to decide whether to go classic or kitsch.