LINKS LIKE A GARDEN

I fell asleep in the living room watching Big Bang Theory but was shocked awake by a cat going nuts in the kitchen. I just thought it was Salem going nuts playing as he does sometimes but I got up to tell him to, "Stop It!" and found him standing over what looked liked in the bad lighting of our apartment to be a cricket, do they even have crickets in Florida? but instead I found it to be a huge spider, a spider the size of a silver dollar. I hate spiders, Wave doesn't care for them much either, but the spider motif pops up over and over again in my writing, which people will see as soon as I get more fiction out into the world. Here is hoping 2010 is better than 2009 was. Though 2009 was not that bad with all the poetry collections I released but I'm moving on to the links portion of this blog entry. As I always do when I do long entries I apologize to those on my Live Journal feed because of the length of this entry but I post in several places at once and thus the "live journal cut" is not used by this hack. Sorry for violating protocol.

I should tell my own border stories at some point as I always get stopped crossing the border between the U.S. and Canada but for now because those stories are really long here are some links to recent stoppages that have crossed my view of knowing. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was stopped and mostly questioned about what she was planning to say about the upcoming Vancouver Olympics. When I read about this I first thought, if you were going to stop Amy Goodman and question her about her activities, her talking about the Olympics wouldn't be my first thought to ask her about? That part of the story just seemed strange to me. More on the story with a little from Keith Olbermann. Though to be honest he gets on my nerves the same way Glenn Beck does but from the liberal side of things. I didn't care for him when he was on ESPN either, all look at me I'm a sportscaster...made my ears hurt at times.
Then you have writerPeter Watts. Here are more links here and here on what happen to him while trying to go home to Canada.
I will finish the border talk to tell you being stopped, singled out, is frightening and nerve wrecking. My experiences with border officers are that they are pushing for you to push back and it takes a lot to keep from either mouthing off or just asking why, both will be considered aggressive by them by the way. I don't know all the details of what happen to Amy Goodman or Peter Watts, my experiences were my own as is both of theirs, but this is not new. The actions of border agents is almost without approach as to their actions unless you are a "name." Lets hope these two cases shine some light on how a lot of people are treated by border officials from both countries.

Is it difficult to write well about sex?
I really don't have problems writing sex scenes but when I make revisions and cuts I tend to cut those. I don't think I'm censoring myself as much as I want the scenes to be titillating to the reader but find my writing of sex boring and only good in a way because I go places I think some writers wouldn't go outside of erotica. And no I don't think wishing to make sex scenes titillating means I'm trying to write porn. Nothing wrong with porn in idea though but that is a large topic in and of itself.

A few links on online privacy:
My view has been. I'm for the most part public online but even if you have private things online you should go in thinking they may become public at any time because thinking any other way is stupid.
EFF Sues DOJ For Sleuthing Practices on Facebook, Twitter
Facebook's New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Google CEO Eric Schmidt Dismisses the Importance of Privacy
Surveillance Shocker: Sprint Received 8 MILLION Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data in the Past Year Remember it is not paranoia if people are watching you.

Here are some links to some stuff I don't have much to say about at the moment but found interesting:
Polish zoo lets visitors meet the Flintstones
Things I Do Not Want For Xmas
College's too-fat-to-graduate rule under fire
Top 100 Comic Book Storylines
Cannibals nabbed selling corpse to kebab house
Dear God, please confirm what I already believe

Books and DVDs I'm taken in of late:
Half Minute Horrors
Thor:Volume Two
Bones:Seasons 1-3
Star Trek: The Animated Series

LINKS LIKE A GARDEN