Books Are Dusty and Muddy Things

To put it nicely.

See, as you may know, I work at the local library here as an assistant to the teen librarian. Today I was working on picking out books for next month's book display. I'm doing books with red and/or green covers to kind of go with the Christmas season coming up. It seemed like it'd be super easy. I could just pick out a few books from the teen section that sounded interesting and had covers with red or green on them.
Well it wasn't that simple. I'd grab a book that looked interesting and look up some reviews on it, only to discover it was full of rather disgusting content. Since that wasn't going so well, I compiled a list of all the books in the teen section with red or green covers (that took a while, there were many more than I'd expected) then proceeded to go down the list looking up reviews. Book after book I discovered to have horrible content. This was the TEEN section. My younger brother is supposed to be old enough for this stuff, and I, four years older than him, was horrified just reading reviews of these books.
Look, this blog is directed mainly at 15-18 year olds, though I try to keep it rated PG for any younger friends or siblings of friends or just plain any younger kids who read some of it. I don't even feel I could uphold my obligation to appropriateness for my audience if I even alluded to what these books graphically describe. Wow. And guess what, only a year or so ago, the library didn't allow anyone under 18 to check out any movies that weren't rated G, seventeen year-olds couldn't get Tangled, but 12 year old kid could check out a book that makes me want to throw up just reading reviews of on the Common Sense Media site. Why is it that books are so different?
I think parents often think that if a kid is reading a book, any book, its a good thing. Because it's educational and all that. It isn't so quick and easy to read a book first before giving it to their kids, so they don't. Sure, they could search through reviews, but it's a lot easier to pre-watch a movie. So they don't check as much as they should. And maybe it doesn't occur to them. Books don't come with ratings like movies and video games do. I think they probably should. That would hurt the YA book industry though.
See, that kind of trashy book sells, doesn't it? Sad to say, but it does. And the YA book industry knows that. It's not some crazy accident that there's all these horrible things in books written for teens. It's not even a decision that the author made by themselves. Books go through agents, then are read and marked up all over by and editor. Then the author gets it back and makes changes. Then the editor reads through again and makes some more suggestions, then the author, then the editor, then the author... It might even be a number of different editors. They know this is going to be marketed to teens, and I bet they know it's wrong too.
Sure, make the excuses. They're just writing realistically. They're writing what the world is really like and what teens really do today. WELL GUESS WHAT GUYS??!! Where do these teens get their ideas to do these things? From your flippin dirty novels!
And that stuff is totally unnecessary. Unless you're writing a historical fiction novel about the holocaust. And even then you don't have to swim in the details. And if you're going to do that, you have every right to, but market it to adults, please.
You can write a romance novel without getting super physical, and you can write a great adventure without dumping blood and gore on us. Tanith Lee for example. She's a adult horror novelist. And that's fine. But when she wrote the Claidi Journals for young adults (one of my favorite series ever, I might add, I can't get over how amazing the books are), there was no extreme violence, the worst language was a few occurances of D*** and the physical romance reached its height at.. like five extremely brief kisses over four books.  Let me repeat that. She's a adult horror novelist.
Write horrible graphic stuff to your heart's content if you want but please, market it to adults!
 I hate how I can't just pick whatever sounds interesting from teen sections in libraries and book stores. I hate being afraid to read because of unnecessary bad content in books. I love reading, but I read a lot less because of that.
I think I'll be praying for the YA book publishing industry. Join me?

It's not Thnot

     Thnot: something kind of like a squid disco ball, but . . . not.

     That had nothing to do with anything. But, you'll remember, yesterday, I said that China would crash, Turkey would fall, and Greece would be overthrown. Oh, and America would be attacked. Well, something unprecedentedly preposterous has happened. I have, not only prevented any huge disasters of that sort from happening, but my predictions have also come true!
     You see, even though I myself am a vegetarian, my family is not, so my dad made a turkey. He dropped a wing when it came out of the over, so you see Turkey fell, in the process he also threw grease all over the kitchen, Grease was over-thrown. I would say that a teacup, or piece of "China" crashed, while it probably did somewhere today, I didn't wish to kill any cups for the sake of my prediction, so I just tossed one onto my bed where it "crashed" but was unharmed. So China crashed. I didn't have to do anything to America myself, for America was attacked with a huge number of belly aches from eating too much.
     If the difference in spelling of "Greece" verses "Grease" bothers you, and you think it doesn't qualify to prove my predictions true, I can throw a map of Greece over my laptop.

     I hope you're having a great thanksgiving! Remember the pilgrims, they were grim because they had no Thnot!
 Good bye :)

Conspiracy Wednesday

     Thursday: Thanksgiving. Friday: Black Friday. Saturday: Small business Saturday. Monday: Cyber Monday. But what about today, Wednesday? I know you've been wondering. Today in CONSPIRACY WEDNESDAY. MWAH HA HA HA!
     My conspiracy theory is that tomorrow, China will Crash. Turkey will fall. Greece will be overthrown.
     And of course, everybody wants to rule the world. So while America is lying helpless, immobile from their over filled stomachs, we shall be attacked.
     But don't worry, I'm here to protect you and since I know of these impending disasters, I will do my best to stop them. So if my predictions do not come true, know that I succeeded in saving the world. If they do come true, I failed to save you, but at least my predictions would be right.

     That is all. I must go save the world now.

Blablabla

     I like to say that quite a bit, "blablabla," I also write laughter like "bahaha," and write "bleh," as my term of slight disapproval. I guess I have a thing for Bs. Bees are cool too though.
     Anyways. What's happened since my last post? Don't be ridiculous, that was a rhetorical question! Yah, so . . . the very next day I decided to do NaNoWriMo. Even though I skipped the first eight days. Do you know what NaNoWriMo is? Just in case you don't, its national novel writin month, so you write a novel at least 50,000 words long in the month of november. Exciting stuff.
     To finish on time you have to write an average of 1666 words a day, I b'lieve. I started 13,000 ish words behind, but now I've about halved that. Which is cool, but obviously still way behind. It's a lot of fun doing NaNoWriMo, but it's fun too, just like its name, annoying to type because of the capital letters, but sounds pretty sweet to say. Bahaha.
     I started another art project and finished the previous one . . . unless I had already finished it by the last post, don't think I did. I'll post it when it comes out of the display case. The new project is an acrylic painting on canvas. It's supposed to be photo realism, but we have to choose one of four color schemes: complimentary, split complimentary, analogous, or monochromatic. (I won't explain these color schemes here, but if you don't know and want to, this page explains it) None of which will produce extremely realistic results, and the point of photo realism is extreme realism . .  I don't quite get what my art teacher was thinking, but okay.
     I finished my drivers ed classes, they wouldn't let me keep my beautiful doodled-on written-on-in five-languages folder. :( I was going to show you that, but oh well. Now I just have my driving sessions with my instructor still to do.
     Another exciting thing: I got hired by my local library! Which is totally awesome. It happened after a fairly complicated series of events that I won't explain, (bwah ha ha ;P ) but I had my first day of work today. I was only there an hour but I got the grand tour and got introduced to everyone that was there, they all seemed really nice and everything, but I don't know if I'll ever know all their names D: Apparently there are five people working there named Debbie. I'm not sure I even met all of them. So that's a little overwhelming. But I have my own little desk and laptop to use, which is.. pink.. Oh my goodness. Honestly not sure whether I like or dislike the color yet. On the one hand, at least it's not boring, but on the other hand, it looks more girly than I really am. Coincidentally, I do happen to be wearing a pink shirt. Epic fail. Actually, just fail, it's not even epic. What does epic even really mean except when we're talking about Beowulf or the Aeneid? Bother.
     Well hey, that's all I feel like saying today. Thanks for reading! Ali bye bye Alibaba!

Nothing Impertinent or Important

  Before you read any further, know that nothing below is significant. Feel free to leave.
Okay, you kept reading, now share my blog on facebook to prove you did, because 99% of people didn't! If you don't share it you will be kidnapped by purple kangaroos, taken to mars in a Grip (that's what they call their spaceships which look like bunches of grapes) then they will take you to their local neptunian representative and decide which of your pets to murder, then they'll kill it in a horrible way and make you watch, helpless to save your fluffy darling.
Tweet this blog if you love humanity and hate bad things.

     Just kidding. I'll still love you if you keep my blog your most guarded secret. I hate people who say stuff like that to get a million facebook likes and such. Or make up stories about Justin Bieber either being murdered or doing something amazingly nice. AND PEOPLE BELIEVE IT. Talk about Beliebers. Actually, people can be generally downright naive sometimes. Myself included. That said, I wasn't even planning to talk about any of that. Or anything at all. Just winging it people! I should join an improv group someday. There is something really fishy about zebra print bananas that I just can't get over . . .

      So what's been going on in my artsy life lately? Well, I doodled in drivers ed class again today. Made some dude with swirly tree like hands and a perfectly round head with no facial features at all. He was holding a bunch of helium filled balloons. And fish were flying in the sky. Exciting stuff, right?

     Parent-teacher conferences was tonight and continues tomorrow so I get the day off from school, yay! My father went and talked to my art teacher, and she told him how wonderful I am. Just kidding. But she did basically say that. So not really kidding. But it's not hard to be wonderful compared to the majority of my highschool, especially when I've been taking art classes my whole life. Baha. Then he talked to my latin teacher, and I think she once again talked very little about me, and more about everything else. Last year she did this sheep demonstration for my parents. Yahh. Um. She's interesting, but awesome.

     My current art obsession is body paint. It has been for a while but I don't if I've talked about it much. I mostly paint my face and take some self portraits, for lack of other people who will let me paint them :P But there's some really sweet body paint artists out there in the world. One I really like is Liu Bolin. He's a chinese artist who (with the help of some assistants who are obviously amazing artists themselves) paints himself to blend in with what's behind him and takes a picture. The picture at the top of this post is one of his. I particularly like this one because the composition is so interesting. It's not just him blending in, there's more to it with the policeman grabbing him and stuff. I think it's really awesome :)  I've come across a few other great ones recently as well but I can't remember their names. So if you think of another crazy body painting artist, let me know!

   Well, that's all I got for now. Thanks for reading! An remember, if you share this blog, your true love will confess his undying love for you. Actually, He did, and His name is Jesus an His love is so undying, he died for you. Seriously crazy stuff. :)  Now you yet again have no motivation to share this. BAHH. Okay, SHARE THS OR U WIL BE MERDERD BAI EVIL BLUDTHSTLY MERMEN NXT TIME U GO IN TEH OSHAN.
Have a good night :) Pass auf dich auf.

PS: I own no rights to the image at the top :P Blablabla. Nobody sue me. If you're thinking about it, let me know and I'll take it off :P