Category Archives: J.D. Rhoades

Lo, Even As I Have Said It, So It Has Come To Pass

By JD Rhoades
I ended the last column thusly:

Normally, when I pose these sorts of questions to my fellow Americans, I get attempts to change the subject or angry denunciations of President Obama and/or “libs,” “leftists,” “statists” or “Obama-bots,” none of which have any connection to the question asked.

And so far, here are the answers from the usual gang of chattering monkeys that make up the conservative commentariat at the Pilot:

From “fugitiveguy” who comments every week, while claiming he doesn’t read the column:

I actually read the article in its entirety. This guy sure asks a lot of questions with the angle of defending his king and deity. To the majority of those questions I would just answer I don’t know. I am glad I don’t have the responsibility although I think I am just about as qualified to run the show as the president. I have seen recipes longer than his resume. But I digest [sic] so therefore I must go now.

I’m not sure if “But I digest” is a malapropism in an attempt at humor, or this person really doesn’t know the language. “Fugitiveguy’s” posts are usually so dimwitted, I suspect the latter.

From “Pappy”, another constant commenter:

Mr Rhoades…wow, sure is a lot of questions !!

Before we can start a conversation, can I assume that you think your king handled each situation to the 12 questions / paragraphs correctly ??

This “king” bullshit is a constant refrain among these pathological liars, who claim, despite all the evidence, that I’m a mindless sycophant who never criticizes the President. (See my columns on getting involved in Syria and Libya in the first place for a refutation).

From “OceanGypsy”:

Great way for the columnist to try to deflect attention from just a few of the many, crazy bad failures of this administration by using directed questions which deflect attention from the key failures of each, then piling them all on top of each other so that no one in their right mind will bother to try to tackle any of them. But hey, he’s a lawyer after all.

Simple answer. If you truly read up on and objectively study each issue brought up you will find the answer to each. And quite possibly become a Libertarian too.

Ah. A Libertarian. The douchey, condescending tone should have clued me in. But, you’ll notice, not even an attempt to answer one question, just another version of the lame old “look it up yourself” dodge that inept Internet debaters use when they’re asked to back their bullshit up.

I am pleased to announce, I did actually get one attempt to actually address one question:

Dusty,

Let’s take a crack at your first question . “If you think President Obama’s weakness in Syria is what led Putin’s annexation of Crimea, what do you think we should have done in Syria?

If he (the president) was not willing to take action he should have just kept his mouth shut.

It was Obama’s bluster that led the world & Putin to see that Obama continued to be a fleckless blow hard. When he stated that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would cross a red line that would have consequences and then nothing happened it proved it. Putin knows that Obama will do do nothing no matter what happens.

Obama’s mantra is shoot your mouth off, carry a small stick and then try to change the subject.

My answer:

Actually, at one point, I was in agreement with you about the “red line.” You can look it up.

But then it actually worked and Assad agreed to give up his chemical weapons, rather than be bombed. So the “red line” actually worked. And I had to admit I was wrong.

Would you rather he still have those weapons? Because if President Obama had “kept his mouth shut”, he’d still have them and would still be using them.

Thanks for reading.

I’ll let you know if I get a response. But I predict the same “you’ll never criticize your king Obama” bushwa. These idiots are nothing if not predictable.

Via: J.D. Rhoades

Question Time

By JD Rhoades
The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Today’s column is a grab bag of questions which, for some strange reason, I can never seem to get a straight answer to:

If you think President Obama’s “weakness” in Syria is what led to Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, what do you think we should have done in Syria? Should we have bombed them for using chemical weapons even after they agreed to give up their chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities? If so, do you also think police officers should be ordered to shoot criminals who’ve thrown down their weapons?

Do you think America should have intervened or should now intervene militarily in Syria? If so, which side should we come in on, the side backed by Hezbollah, or the one fighting alongside al-Qaida?

If you think our current response to the Russian annexation of Crimea is too weak, do you favor military intervention? If so, please locate Ukraine on a map and tell us where American troops should be based for such an intervention and where they’d be supplied from.

If you blame President Obama’s “weakness” for the Russian annexation of Crimea, do you also blame President George W. Bush for the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia? If not, why not?

If you think Obamacare needs to be repealed, are you also willing to repeal the popular parts of it, like the part protecting people with pre-existing conditions and the part allowing parents to insure their children to age 26? If not, how do you propose to keep the insurance system alive if everyone isn’t required to pay into it?

What do you propose to do with the millions of people already insured through the exchanges when the mandate goes away and insurance companies can go back to charging people exorbitant amounts or denying them insurance altogether if they have pre-existing conditions?

If you were one of the people who insisted in 2012 that the polls putting President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney were “skewed” and that Romney was going to win in a landslide, please tell us why we should believe you when you claim that the Obama administration is “cooking the books” on Affordable Care Act enrollment and that Obamacare is doomed to fail?

If you believe that a single-payer, taxpayer supported, medical insurance plan is “socialism” and that it will destroy America, do you plan to refuse a Medicare card when you become eligible or turn yours in if you have one now? If not, why not? If your reason is “I already paid into this,” isn’t that just an acknowledgement that it’s a taxpayer-funded system?

If you claim Obamacare is a “socialist takeover” of the American health care system, please explain how the terms “socialism” and “takeover” apply to a system of privately owned insurers paying privately employed doctors with support from privately paid premiums.

If you don’t think “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, being locked in small boxes and subjected to extended “stress positions” are not torture and therefore not legally actionable, would you say the same if those techniques were used by terrorist groups against American citizens?

Would you consider being strapped to a board, having a cloth put over your face, then having water poured on the cloth until you had the sensation of drowning to be torture if you had to undergo that yourself? If waterboarding isn’t torture, do we need to apologize and pay reparations to the families of the Japanese officers we prosecuted for war crimes for using similar techniques?

If you’re upset about government gathering of private data, were you as upset about it when the government’s ability to do so was greatly expanded by the Patriot Act? If not, why not? Do you support rolling back the Patriot Act? Do you think we should re-examine the principles set out in Smith vs. Maryland, the 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled that getting “metadata” about American citizens’ phone calls (i.e., information about who called who when and for how long) was not a “search,” since that information was not “private” at all? If not, why not, if you claim to be angry about government spying on us?

Can you do any better?

(Author’s note: if you follow the link to the paper’s website and check out the comments, you’ll see that the answer to that last question is “no”).

Via: J.D. Rhoades

Whose Side Are They On?

By JD Rhoades
The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: Your neighbor has spilled toxic waste in your yard. You take him to court. Your lawyer stands up and tells the court the neighbor should clean up the mess he made in a “reasonable time.”

“I’ll do better,” His Honor says. “I’ll tell him to clean it up immediately.”

“Hooray!” you think. “I got more than I asked for!”

Then your lawyer announces he’s appealing the judge’s ruling. Immediately is too soon, he says. We want that nice, squishy “reasonable time” language.

You might be upset. You might wonder whose side your own lawyer is on. And you’d be right. But that’s pretty much what happened last week when our state Environmental Management Commission was in court over the problem of coal ash contamination by Duke Energy, aka Duke “Progress” Energy.

State regulators have known for years that coal ash is nasty stuff. It’s a byproduct of coal-fired power plants and contains poisons like arsenic, selenium and cadmium. It’s been piling up in wastewater ponds owned by Duke Energy for years.

But they’ve been sitting on their hands until a coalition of environmental groups sued last year under the Federal Clean Water Act. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources finally got off its butt and filed environmental violations against Duke’s coal ash pits, but only after meeting with Duke Energy’s chief lobbyist.

Then they immediately offered to settle with the $50 billion company for $99,112. Duke could probably pay that out of the change in the couch cushions at its headquarters.

After a stormwater pipe in one of the ponds sprang a leak, dumping as much as 39,000 tons of the ash into the Dan River, the public outcry caused DENR to back out of the sweetheart deal with Duke. So you might have thought that when the matter came to court, the EMC, which “oversees and adopts rules for several divisions” of DENR, might take a sterner line, especially after Gov. Pat McCrory suggested that his administration would get tougher with Duke.

You might have thought that, but you’d be wrong. The EMC argued that it didn’t have authority to order an “immediate” cleanup. When Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway said, “Actually, you do,” you might have thought that EMC might go, “Cool. We can do a better job defending North Carolina’s environment now.”

You might have thought that, but you’d be wrong again. EMC, apparently deciding that a toothless watchdog was a good thing to be, announced that it would be appealing the ruling to the N.C. Court of Appeals. Tell me again: Whose side are these guys supposed to be on?

I’m sure all this has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that McCrory worked for Duke for more than 28 years. I’m sure the fact that Duke has provided more than $1.1 million in support to McCrory campaigns since 2008 has nothing at all to do with the fact that the people he tasked with protecting our environment are in court arguing for an easier ride for the people who are trashing it.

It’s true that the governor directly appointed eight of the commission’s 15 members (including one of Duke Energy’s former lawyers), and the remaining seven members were appointed by Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis and Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, both McCrory allies.

But I’m sure that has absolutely no influence over the way our so-called environmental regulators are bowing and scraping to McCrory’s former employer and biggest supporter and asking, “Sirs, we don’t want to bother you, sirs. How much time would you like to clean up the horrendous mess you made, sirs? … Until you’re doggone good and ready? That would be fine, sirs. Please excuse us, and feel free to kick us in our behinds on our way out.”

If you truly believe none of that is connected, I have some waterfront property to sell you on the Dan River. Cheap.

Oh, and by the way, shame on you, Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, for your complicity in this farce. I actually had some hope for you for a while, but you’ve turned out to be just another remnant of the limp and weak Perdue administration, whose fecklessness and corruption made it possible for these oligarchs to take over and sell us out to the highest bidder while you drew up the sale papers.

Thanks to McCrory and his cronies, thanks to the people who voted for them, and thanks to the lame and wimpy Democrats who made it all possible, it’s Duke Energy’s state now. Their state, their water, their dumping ground.

They own it. We just live in it, unless we get off our own behinds and vote these rascals out.

Via: J.D. Rhoades

The Parrots Squawk About Obamacare (with commentary from the usual gang of idiots)

By JD Rhoades
The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

As I entered the shop, a string of bells attached to the door jingled to announce my presence.

The place was small and cluttered, with narrow aisles between shelves crammed with pet foods, aquarium gear, and cat litter. The air had a slightly rank animal smell.

A little old man with a wrinkled face and a fringe of white hair around the top of his bald head came out from the back, wiping his hands on a rag. “Welcome to GOPets,” he said. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw the sign, and I was wondering about it.”

He straightened up, beaming with pride. “We sell only genuine Republican pets to right-thinking individuals.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “How can pets have political parties?”

“Come on back and see,” he said. He led me to a back room, where a line of parrots sat on perches. “Our latest shipment,” he said. “These parrots are specially trained by hours of watching Fox News to expose the problems of Obamacare.”

“Really,” I said. “And what problems would those be?”

“Check it out,” he said proudly. He pointed at the nearest bird, which spread its wings and squawked, “No one’s going to sign up for Obamacare! Everyone hates it! RAWK! It’ll fail! RAWK!”

“Guess this little guy hasn’t heard the news,” I said. “Despite the problems early in the rollout, looks like they hit the target, and then some — 7.1 million enrollees as of April 1. And that doesn’t count the young people who got coverage on their parents’ insurance till they’re 26 or the people who got coverage through Medicaid expansion.”

“Well, how about this one?” the old man said. He led me to an orange and yellow bird that crowed, “The people who signed up for Obamacare aren’t going to pay their premiums! RAWK! It’ll fail! RAWK!”

“Actually,” I said, “that’s pure speculation, since most of the people who signed up recently haven’t even gotten a bill yet. And the places that have reported in so far — California and Vermont — say 85 to 90 percent of the people who have gotten a bill are paying, which is plenty enough to sustain the program. What else you got?”

A green and yellow-striped bird called from a nearby perch. “People lost their coverage! Obama lied! RAWK!”

“Some people lost their old coverage because their plans were lousy and didn’t meet the minimum standards set by the ACA,” I said. “But Obama didn’t cancel them, the insurance companies did — and then most replaced them with new, compliant policies. And every single one of the ‘Obamascare’ news stories about people losing their coverage turned out to be bogus.

“When news organizations got off their butts and investigated rather than just repeating the scripts of attack ads, they found out that these fake ‘victims’ were ignoring the fact that they could have gotten cheaper, better insurance through the Exchanges, or that they were actually paying lower premiums and ignoring the cap on out-of-pocket costs. Fact is, millions more are now covered than were before.”

“Cooking the books! Cooking the books! RAWK!” a nearby blue-feathered bird piped up.

“Let me guess,” I said, “back during the election, this bird was squawking about ‘skewed polls,’ right?”

He looked stunned. “How did you know?”

“They’re nothing if not predictable. And how’d that work out for you?”

As I spoke, I spotted one grizzled old bird whose feathers were ragged and faded. As I approached, he looked at me balefully with an eye filmy with age.

“I’m not a parrot,” he said in a croaking, pitiful voice. “The Democrats are the parrots. They’ll never criticize Obama. Rawk.”

“Wow,” I said, “that’s an old one, all right. Delusional as well. … So is anybody buying any of this?”

“Not as many people as used to,” the old man said sadly. “If it wasn’t for the news media repeating everything the parrots say without challenging it, no one would know about them at all.”

He began to cry. “I’m ruined,” he said. “All the talking points my parrots have learned are useless.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “There’ll always be some who’ll listen to a lie over and over and believe in it even after it’s debunked.”

A mynah bird in the corner stretched its wings and threw back its head. “BENGHAAAAAZI!” it hollered. “OBAMA LIED, PEOPLE DIED! CAW!”

“See what I mean?” I said.

The old man smiled. “I feel better already.”

I sighed. “I wish I did.”

THE PARROTS SQUAWK BACK:

Perennial anonymous coward fugitiveguy, commenting as he does every week on the Pilot website:

Dusty would be right at home on a comedy central roast. Anyone who feels that the needless death of 4 brave Americans including the first ambassador killed in 3 decades is fodder for faux humor just to file a column would be in good company. I don’t think it was just the string of bells that announced your presence.

This is a pretty frequent tactic of the wingnuts: make fun of their desperate attempts to create an Administration destroying scandal out of the Benghazi tragedy, and they cry all sort of crocodile tears about how you’re mocking the dead. So let me make it clear: I’m not mocking the dead, dim-bulb, I’m mocking people like you. Hope this helps.

Then there’s my old pal Frank Staples aka “skylinefirepest”, who posted this gem:

Dusty, you’re turning into a brazen liar trying to defend your idol’s defenseless crapola. Your parents would not approve!

Frank’s comments constantly invoke my parents, because like most wingnuts, he’s an asshole with no sense of boundaries.

Actually, Frank, my mom tells me quite often how she likes my columns. She’s told me she thinks you’re a jerk, though.

My favorite, though, is this one, from anonymous cowards “JK”:

Does anyone read Mr. Roades’ [sic] columns…. certainly not me!

Gotta love the idiots who spend time commenting on something they say they never read.

Via: J.D. Rhoades

The Well Truly Has No Bottom

By JD Rhoades
You know, after my last column, I didn’t think there was anyone who would be low enough to rise to defend the late Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. When even the usual gang of haters fell silent (the ones who show up every week to tell me how uninteresting they find the column they read every week), I thought there would finally be someone so vile, even the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts wouldn’t throw in their lot with them.

I was wrong.

Thank you, ******* **** of Carthage, NC for your letter (yes, an actual mailed letter) that proved to me there actually are people in my own town who will defend picketing the funerals of slain children, murder victims, and soldiers fallen in the service of their country, all in the name of hate and in the name of God. Thank you, ******* **** of Carthage, NC for proving that the well of hate, ignorance and abject stupidity truly has no bottom.

Dusty

PS: Thank you especially for attaching a copy of the column to your note, because I certainly would not have known what I’d written otherwise. Also thanks for attaching the obit from Time Magazine with the highlighted sentence that you think proves your point, but which actually does nothing of the sort. If you hadn’t done that, I might not have realized I was dealing with a complete dimwit.

Yours in Christ, D

(Updated to remove the actual name, since this sort of idiot would use it to whine and play the martyr.)

Via: J.D. Rhoades

Goodbye,Mr. Phelps. You Failed.

By JD Rhoades

The Pilot Newspaper: Columns

On March 19, Fred Phelps, founder and pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, passed away in a hospice in Kansas. You have to admit, he was an easy guy to hate.

Members of the WBC became famous in recent years, not just for their virulent anti-gay stance, but in the way they expressed it: by picketing funerals.

Phelps and his crew started off by picketing in parks in their hometown of Topeka, Kan., because said parks were supposedly sites for gay activity. Soon they were making headlines for protesting at the funerals of gay murder victims, such as Matthew Shepard, waving signs that said that Shepard was in hell and especially that “God Hates Fags,” a phrase which became the slogan most identified with the church.

Quickly, however, they decided to expand the group of people they were trying to offend to, well, just about everyone. They began picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed overseas in 2005, because, Phelps said, combat deaths were God’s punishment for America’s “tolerance” of homosexuals.

I must confess, when I saw a picture of a WBC sign that said “Thank God For Dead Soldiers,” I had to wonder if this wasn’t some bizarre piece of performance art meant to discredit the anti-gay rights movement. (They also once picketed a store for selling Swedish-made vacuum cleaners — because, I guess, Sweden was too gay for them).)

But no, it eventually became clear that these wackaloons were serious. They picketed the funerals of people killed in the Sago Mine disaster. They picketed the funeral of Mister Rogers. They picketed the funeral of the 9-year-old girl killed in the same shooting that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. They stomped on the American flag at the gates of Camp Lejeune after the murder of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach (even though there was zero evidence that Lauterbach was gay).

Their philosophy could best be summed up by a song the church once recorded, a parody of “We Are the World” called “God Hates the World.” And everywhere they went, you saw Phelps grinning his ghastly death’s-head grin and looking like The Beast from “Poltergeist II.”

He was the living, hideous symbol of the worst hatred and bigotry in America, a man who made you grit your teeth whenever you admitted, as the Supreme Court ruled in one case brought against him, that freedom of speech extended even to the most egregiously offensive speech imaginable.

Now he’s gone. So how should we react to the death of someone so completely horrible? Quite a few tweets and Facebook comments called for either dancing or performing — shall we say — other functions upon Phelps’ grave. Others called for studiously ignoring the event.

My favorite suggestion, however, was from a former Baptist minister who came out a few years ago and now blogs under the title of “The Gay Christian”: “My final prayer is that people do show up to his funeral as a show of pageantry. I hope they show up with large, decorated signs and billboards. I hope they line the streets leading to the funeral home, and I hope that they make sure they are seen. Finally, I hope every one of those billboards and signs read, ‘We forgive you.’”

Now, I understand how that would be hard for some, and downright impossible for others. There’s no way anyone can judge a mother of a dead son or daughter targeted by Phelps if she can’t bring herself to forgive him and his followers for publicly insisting that her child’s death was God’s judgment or that the child was at that moment burning in hell.

But I had to smile when I saw the picture of a group of counter-demonstrators who showed up at the first WBC protest after Phelps’ death with a banner that simply said “Sorry for Your Loss.”

Fred Phelps once told an interviewer that if people hated him, he felt he was doing his job right. Maybe it’s time for people, every day, to show Fred Phelps, wherever he is, just how badly he failed, by not hating anyone, even him, the way he and his flock hated others.

Via: J.D. Rhoades

THANK YOU, MURDERATI!

by J.D. Rhoades

I honestly don’t remember if it was JT, or Pari, or both who asked me to join Murderati back in 2007. I’d met and liked them both at various conferences. When I saw the roster of other people who’d been posting there or who’d be joining at the same time, I saw some other names that pleased me. These were folks who I’d met, hung out with, had a great time with, and—this is the important part—whose work I liked and admired. Pari and JT , of course, but also people like Louise Ure, Toni McGee Causey, Alexandra Sokoloff and Robert Gregory Browne. So I said sure, that’d be cool, especially since I would only be doing one every two weeks.

Great, I was told. You’re following Ken Bruen.

Say what?

You’ve got to understand something. I fucking idolized Ken Bruen. I still do. THE GUARDS knocked me flat on my ass, and I quickly gobbled up everything of his I could get my hands on (and still do). He is an amazing writer, a master, a true poet of this genre, as well as a heck of a nice guy. I knew there was no way in hell anyone was going to want to read a thing I wrote if it followed one of Ken’s amazing pieces.

It got worse. I started looking at who else I was going to be blogging with, reading some of the ones I hadn’t already read, and I realized: ALL of these people were better writers than I was. They were more talented, more disciplined, wittier, better looking, and more successful.

Damn, I thought, I am in WAY over my head.

But it’s like playing music, or acting, or sex: you get better at it by doing it with people way better than you. And as I read my fellow ‘Rati’s books and blog posts, I learned a lot, and not just about writing. I still refer people who ask me about story structure to Alex’s excellent posts on the subject, and I have her story elements checklist saved to a file on my computer that I often pull up. Rob did a great post on free tools for writers that’s still very useful. Tess’s posts, including this one, taught me a lot about fan expectations and how one who deals with the reading public should have a thick skin. Toni’s blog about motherhood, Dear God, the Stick Turned Blue, made me laugh and brought tears to my eyes in the same post. Cornelia’s unflinchingly honest entry about clinical depression and better living through chemistry, Why I Say Yes to Drugs, was a source of inspiration and comfort to me. And that’s just a small sample. Reading those posts, and dozens of other ones by the smart, funny, informed, fearless, honest, and incredibly talented writers here made me want to write, and write better, because it was such an honor to be in company like this.

And I can’t forget the commenters here. Not just my fellow ‘Rati, who showed up to offer their own perspectives in comments, but the people like Jake, Reine, Kaye, Patti, Dave, David, Stacey, Bryon, Tom, Christa, Shizuka, Judy, K.D., R.J., B.G., P.K. the Bookeemonster, Stephen, other Stephen, and so many others who offered support, advice, and jokes to all of us. (I have to pause here to mention commenter and fellow writer Wilfred Bereswill, who left us, suddenly and far too soon, a few weeks ago. RIP, sir.)

The decision to leave regular blogging here was a tough one, and I put it off for a long time. I still miss it sometimes, but the reasons I set out here for leaving are still there.

So thank you, my fellow writers at Murderati. Thank you, readers who took the time and energy to share your ideas, knowledge and support with us. You made me sharper. You made me work harder. You made me braver.

You made me better.

To Our Health We Drank a Thousand Times, It’s Time to Ramble On

by J.D. Rhoades

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it. This is my last regular post here on Murderati.

It hasn’t been an casual decision, and it took a while to make. There are a lot of factors that have gone into it, but far and away the most important one is: I need that Tuesday evening back.

As I’ve mentioned here several times, I still have a day job practicing law. That takes up most of my days. I’ve never been much of a morning person. I’ve tried getting up at 5 AM to write, and it never seems to work for me. That leaves the evenings as my only realistic time to write fiction.

Every other Wednesday, I have a Murderati post due, so there goes that Tuesday. I also, as I’ve mentioned before, write a weekly political humor column for the local paper. That’s due on Thursdays, so I spend my Wednesday writing time on that.

So on my “Murderati weeks,” I lose two evenings of fiction writing in a row. That’s made it very hard to get back to the work in progress on Thursdays. In fact, trying to pick the thread back up after two days is so bloody difficult that I confess, I sometimes give in to the temptation to just chuck it all and go watch Community (promising myself I’ll just write more on the weekend). Fridays are hit and miss because of family stuff, so….you can see the dilemma. I’m fighting to get my career back, which means every opportunity to write becomes precious, and let’s face it, I ain’t getting any younger and certainly not any prettier.

So some commitments have to go. The newspaper column may be next, but they actually pay me for that. Not a huge amount, but as precious as time is, every dollar is almost as precious these days, what with one kind in college and another headed there.

All that said, this wasn’t an easy decision. I’ve had a blast here, and I will always be grateful to Pari and JT for inviting me. I’ll always be grateful as well for all the encouragement, knowledge, laughs, and even the tears each and every one of you, both posters and commenters, has shared with me.

I look over at the right sidebar, and I see all the folks who have come and gone: Simon. Michael. Elaine. Naomi. And of course, Ken. When Toni, Brett and Rob bowed out (for many of the same reasons I am), I realized that change is part of what keeps a blog fresh, so it’s time for me to move along as well.

The good news is that my replacement is going to be Jonathan Hayes. I’ve hung out with Jonathan some, and I can tell you he is is one fascinating guy. He’s a forensic pathologist, a food writer, a music fan with tastes almost as eclectic as my own, a raconteur, and he writes one hell of a thriller. I know I’m leaving you in good hands.

I’ve let the folks know I may be able to pinch hit as a guest blogger from time to time, and I have a feeling that my inability to keep any opinion to myself means I’ll still be around in the comments. But for now…play me off, Jimmy!

Library Porn

by J.D. Rhoades

No, not the kind that features hot librarians (not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Lately, I seem to keep stumbling across (and saving) these amazing, beautiful pictures I find online of libraries around the world. So I thought I’d share some of my favorites with you.

This one is currently my computer desktop:

It’s the “Long Room” at the Trinity College Library in Dublin. Sadly, I understand it’s more of a museum now than an actual reading room. Still, it’s iconic enough that George Lucas reportedly used the image as the basis for the Jedi Archives in Attack of the Clones:

Trinity, I hear, was even contemplating legal action at one time. Not sure how you’d copyright a building, but that’s not my field of law.

There there’s this little lovely, taken at the Annex of the Senate Library in the Palais de Luxembourg in Paris:

Looks like miles and miles of books. Mmmmmm……

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale looks like some futuristic computer core:

While the Thomas Fisher Rare Book collection at the University of Toronto is an awe-inspiring tower of words upon words upon words…

No post on this subject, of course, would be complete without a link to this, the panoramic view of the interior of the Strahov Philosophical Library in Prague. The pic is a big mother, 40 gigapixels in fact, so I figured I’d best not try to embed it here. But if you’re a lover of books and libraries, check it out and look around. It’ll make your eyes pop out of your head like you were in a cartoon.

I love these libraries. They’re like temples. They not only hold lovely and inspiring works of art, they’re works of art in their own right.

So…share with us, if you will. Point us at pics of your favorite libraries.

Treat the Youths Right

by J.D. Rhoades

Like a lot of you probably did, I found the above video very moving. despite the fact that there’s a nagging cynical voice in the back of my head that says it’s just Google trying to cash in on the “It Gets Better” meme. Still, it’s an important message, given the number of high-profile suicides of young gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, etc. people.

It got me thinking, though. While LGBT folks are particularly at risk, they’re not the only ones. There are a lot of people bullied every day for no other reason than they’re different. You know, your geeks, freaks, and weirdos. Your nerds, spazzes, dorks, and dweebs. Kids get bullied because of their ethnicity, their religion, their weight. Some get bullied because they’d rather read than play or watch sports. I’m not sure at what age kids start being cruel to anyone who doesn’t fit seamlessly into the pack, but I know it gets particularly mean starting in junior high and can escalate to downright brutality in high school.

I was moderately lucky. I was reading from the age of four, and I had my nose in a book at every opportunity. I read stuff that was above my age group, and I talked about it. And don’t believe people didn’t notice. I got called names. I got pushed around. But I got bigger. I learned to throw a punch. More importantly, I eventually discovered that being funny could get me out of having to throw punches, especially if I was funny at the expense of teachers and other authority figures. So by high school, most of it had tapered off But there were still people I felt nervous around because I saw too many examples of what coud happen to someone who was merely perceived as different. For exampe, a friend of mine made the wrong joke to a carload of cruising rednecks and got his face slashed open with a box-cutter for it.

But you know what? It did get better. I got out of town, went to college, found some like-minded friends in an enviroment where being a “reader” wasn’t suspect (video NSFW):

…and the bullies (mostly) grew up.

But some kids don’t make it. Kids like Phoebe Prince, who killed herself at 15 after being mercilessly harassed by schoolmates. Or Ryan Halligan. who was hounded to death by people who pretended to befriend him, then mocked him publicly for things he’d told them in confidence. The list goes on and on. These were kids who weren’t gay, they were just different, and the pack turned on them for it. They saw no way out. They didn’t know that it gets better.

So, if you were a little different, a little weird, a little out of the mainstream, tell us: did it get better? And if it did, do you know some young person in a similar situation that might need to hear it?