Laughable article by the non-journalist Nola Cancel, who apparently can turn any incident into a plug for Anne Rice.

In yesterday's episode, she managed to make the case of Granny Goodwitch, who used a fake name for her Facebook account (against FB's TOS) and got deleted by Facebook, into an Anne Rice sob fest. She even used a picture of Anne Rice. Where, you ask, is the picture of Granny Goodwitch? Good question.

http://www.examiner.com/article/recent-social-media-issues-strike-anne-rice-s-facebook-page

If I didn't know that Nola was one of Anne Rice's biggest fans, I would think this article was a parody. Let us examine (<---- see what I did there?)

>>Apparently, no one is safe from the pit-falls of social media including Anne Rice.<<

Translation: I love Anne Rice and must talk about her, even though this issue has absolutely nothing to do with Anne Rice. And pitfalls shouldn't have a hyphen, but that's just one of the many things I don't know.

>>Granny Goodwitch, subjected to the arbitrary rules of the Facebook hierarchy.<<

Translation: Granny Goodwitch used a pseudonym. Facebook's rules state that one must use their real name. Notice how Nola implies Granny is innocent and FB is the evil overlord?

>>A constant presence on Mrs. Rice's page, Granny is a beloved figure whose many enlightening posts on everything from bees to bats to ancient archeology,<<

Translation: Granny is beloved, therefore shouldn't have to follow the rules.

>>In the four years the "Anne Rice Examiner" has been covering Mrs. Rice's Facebook page, we have never witnessed a negative post or hint of bullying from Ms. Goodwitch.<<

Translation: Granny is positive, therefore she shouldn't have to follow the rules.

>>However, she is a constant target of Facebook's "real-name" policy and has had her own widely popular page shut-down on numerous occasions, losing access to life-long contacts and personal pictures, not to mention, the inability to post to those pages she loves to frequent, including Anne Rice's.<<

Translation: Constant target = About a week. "Real-name" policy = Real-name policy. Granny shouldn't have her page shut down even though she wasn't using her real name, which violates FB's real-name policy.

Nola quotes Anne Rice: "Granny Goodwitch has AGAIN been blocked on Facebook! What is going on? Why is Facebook relentlessly persecuting this lovely and benign member of our FB community! What in the world is prompting this? Oh, I know, there is some regulation about real names, but FB is filled with people posting under fake and fictional names, and filled with people up to mischief with their fake names; whereas this poster is a loving, positive person, who has always offered us wonderful, informative links and comments on this page!"

Translation: Facebook is enforcing its own rules and blocking someone who is not. Anne Rice's outrage is hilarious. I love her use of the phrases "relentlessly persecuting" (as if they have had Granny handcuffed and thrown in jail at every opportunity) and "some regulation about real names" (as if it is a little-known rules that FB has, for the first time ever, used so they can "relentlessly persecute" the poor, helpless Granny Goodwitch).

The fact that other people have been able to get away with using fake names to do mischief has no bearing on FB's right to use their own rules to delete someone's page. If people don't like FB's TOS, they are free to complain, boycott, email FB, go elsewhere or take their chances with using a pseudonym. What they are not free to do, if they want to be responsible and honest, is claim that Granny has been persecuted. That is ludicrous. But Anne Rice and her Puppets of the Page are famous for being ludicrous. Or should I say infamous?

>>However, this rule has never been strictly enforced and Facebook continues to be a site that contains millions and millions of fake identities and countless necessary or unnecessary pseudonyms.<<

Translation: I don't like it when Facebook enforces a rule I don't like. I actually don't know how many fake identities Facebook contains, but saying millions and millions sounds really cool even though I have no idea how many fake identities FB really has. But I'm not a real journalist, anyway, so lack of facts is no problem for me.

 

>>Anonymity on the internet has long been an issue of Anne Rice as she continues to fight the good fight against social media trolls and bullies. On some sites, such as "Amazon" and "Goodreads", many first time authors bear the brunt of harsh reviews and constant "down-voting" for a variety of reasons, while the perpetrators safely hide behind the particular site's anonymity policy. This particularly "mean" practice has caused many a newbie writer to suffer poor sales at best and to give up writing for good, at worst.<<

Translation: This has nothing to do with the Facebook issue, but AR likes me to put in a plug for her fight against anonymity, even though it is totally the opposite of her trying to get FB to allow Granny to use a pseudonym. Don't try to make sense of this. Just read the part about all the many newbie writers who have suffered poor sales or given up writing for good, because of anonymous "bullies" and please don't ask me to name any of them. I don't know any names, because nobody has ever really said who they are or proved that what I'm saying is the factual.

Another fun quote from Anne Rice, where she gets twisted in her own lack of logic. ""So we are living in an interesting world today on the net ... becoming deeply invested in websites which aren't necessarily going to enforce their own rules, or tolerate any appeal of any decision they make about banning someone ... or ignoring someone whom others claim is an abuser. It's part of the reality we have to face." - Anne Rice"

Translation: Facebook enforced their own rules! How dare they! They won't tolerate an appeal! How dare they! I'm Anne Rice! How dare they!

>>And, she may be right. Though some have fought back against these huge conglomerates and succeeded, so many others have lost years of time spent developing their pages and friendships without any thought or consideration of the devastation that follows.<<

Translation: People took their chances when they broke FB's rules and got caught. How dare they have to take responsibility! Not fair! Not fair!

>>However, until a better method of policing these sites is found, instituted and maintained, we have no choice, if we wish to continue having an online presence, to bear with them.<<

Translation: OK, this one just makes me roar with laughter. Policing these sites? Seriously? What business is it of anyone to police a site they have voluntarily chosen to join? Gah, how did our society become so immature as to think we can make the rules for someone else's site? No wonder Nola is an apologist for Anne Rice. She thinks just like her.

>>As of this writing, we are happy to report; Granny Goodwitch has once again been allowed on Facebook (check out Anne Rice's page to find her). Maybe this time, the internet police will leave her alone.<<

Translation: I want to police these sites!!!! So other internet police, go away and let Anne Rice and me do the policing. We know what's best for everyone!!!

We Are the Anne Rice. You Will be Assimilated. Resistance is Futile.

Though remembered today mainly as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift was known to his contemporaries for much more than that.  In this biography, David Nokes details the span of Swift’s eventful life, from his childhood in Dublin to his time as a propagandist and disappointed placeseeker in England, through to his later years as an author and Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.  The Swift that emerges from these pages is a frustrated man, filled with disappointment at receiving less than his perceived due.  Yet such disappointment provided the acidic edge to the satirical writings that made him famous from his day to ours.

Nokes’s biography is an admirable study of Swift’s life and times, one that attempts to penetrate the mystery that surrounded much of his life.  He does not hesitate in hypothesizing about the many decisions he made and speculating on such persistent questions as his possible marriage to Esther Johnson.  Though Nokes does not address every work that Swift produced, he does analyze his subject’s major writings for the insights they possess into Swift’s personality and views.  He supports his arguments with frequent quotes from his subject’s many writings, though reading the book alongside a collection of his writings (such as the Major Works) as a supplement helps to understand Swift better still, as well as providing exposure to some unjustly neglected writings from this great author.  For anyone seeking a perceptive study of Swift’s life that is more digestible than Irvin Ehrenpreis’s monumental three-volume study, this is the book to read.

 

Justin Lookadoo is a hypocritical bastard. All through this book he praised god and saying how great he is and all that crap. He's preaching about acceptance and then he gets to the subject of Evolution and he called in all crap and anyone that believes in it is dumb, he's saying there's no evidence to back it up, but there's more evidence on evolution then there is on god.

 

Now onto the book: I was excited to read this book but the more I read it the less I liked it. It was super preachy. I should have done some research on this one. I liked the idea behind it but I feel like it could have been done better by someone else and less preachy. Oh did I mention its really preachy.

Moliere has long been on my to-read list because his comedies were on a list of "100 Significant Books" I was determined to read through. The introduction in one of the books of his plays says that of his "thirty-two comedies... a good third are among the comic masterpieces of world literature." The plays are surprisingly accessible and amusing, even if by and large they strike me as frothy and light compared to comedies by Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Wilde, Shaw and Rostand. But I may be at a disadvantage. I'm a native New Yorker, and looking back it's amazing how many classic plays I've seen on stage, plenty I've seen in filmed adaptations and many I've studied in school. Yet I've never encountered Moliere before this. Several productions of Shakespeare live and filmed are definitely responsible for me love of his plays. Reading a play is really no substitute for seeing it--the text is only scaffolding. So that might be why I don't rate these plays higher. I admit I also found Wilbur's much recommended translation off-putting at first. The format of rhyming couplets seemed sing-song and trite, as if I was reading the lyrics to a musical rather than a play. As I read more I did get used to that form, but I do suspect these are the kinds of works that play much better on stage than on the page. Tartuffe is the second play by Moliere I've read out of five; this one, about over-religiosity and hypocrisy is my favorite. The title character Tartuffe is a conman who prays on the religious sensibility and man-crush of his patron Orgon. The scene in particular where Orgon responds to reports of his wife's illness by repeatedly asking, "But what about Tartuffe" nearly had me laughing out loud. The character of the pert and shrewd lady's maid Dorine is particularly delightful.

No. Fuck no. This is unreadable. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure that the Surgeon General would label it as a carcinogenic since: