My Own Two Cents

I read this book recently, which I thought was rather interesting. The plot was good, and the characters and the interplay between them were really cool. It was a book that I would recommend to a lot of my friends and coworkers.

Except for one thing.

The book was full of profanity. And I'm not talking about the occasional "Oh S***" here. Nearly every other word that came out of the main character's mouth was a swear word.

For example, the main character is keeping a blog about some of her experiences, and in it someone (I'll call him Bob) responds to one of the posts by asking if she could tone down on the profanity, saying that it doesn't really add to what is being said. Someone else (a relative of the protagonist) writes in later and says that she really is grateful for all the support the readers are giving, then finishes out her comment by saying (more or less), "Oh, and Bob, no one f***ing cares what you f***ing think, anyway."

Personally (and I've mentioned this snippit to some of my friends, and they think the same way), I agree with Bob. While I am the first to admit that I have on occasion inserted a colorful phrase here or there, I have to ask, does it ever really add anything to a conversation? If you constantly have to insert so many choice words into your speech, what does that say about you, or your ability to communicate?

Just a thought.

Wa-hoo!

I'd like to think that this is all because of my previous rant, but I know it's probably not true. Finally, someone has seen the light. Now if only they would do it for the Irish and Welsh as well.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3174884.ece

A Disturbing Discovery

I was reading my e-mail the other day when I came across this horrific discovery. Apparently, the powers that be at the Library of Congress have decided that books that have been written by Scottish authors are going under a new subject heading. Or, rather, they are being reassigned as a subsection of a pre-existing subject heading. And because the LOC is the largest library in the world, many other libraries are probably going to follow suit and classify their books in the same way.

That subject heading is now (are you ready?) English literature -- Scottish authors.

English literature, not British. This means that, were you to look up the collected works of Robert Burns, or RLS' A Child's Garden of Verses, or, for that matter, Harry Potter in the Library of Congress, you will find them all under English literature.

Does anyone else besides me see a major classification problem with this? I mean, how many times do people have to say that Scotland is not part of England for the rest of the world to realize it? No one at the LOC would even remotely entertain the idea of making a subject heading of Pennsylvania literature -- Massachusetts authors. Why? Because Massachusetts is not part of Pennsylvania. It never has been, and probably never will be. It's the same idea here. Scotland is part of Britain, yes, a part of the United Kingdom, yes, but it is not part of England. It never has been and most likely never will be. Likewise, England is not part of Scotland. They are two entirely different political entities, completely autonomous of each other. It's time the world FINALLY REALIZED THIS!

Grrr.

Oh, and they've done this with Irish and Welsh authors too.