Time For Parts Unknown

And one woman's tea...

I suppose it’s par for the course that the year I finally decide to become a writer, book-banning returns like a runny-nosed, syphilitic boyfriend you broke up with in high school who won’t stop trying to friend you on Facebook.

Normally I’d sort of look forward to the challenge of trying to write something interesting enough to warrant banning, but now it literally takes only one person complaining about a book to get it removed from school and library shelves in Florida.

Where’s the challenge in that?

Sure, the Moms for Liberty censorship cabal, better known as Klanned Karenhood, is removing all the books by suspiciously brown and black people, naughty women people, trouble-making man people, and also suspiciously non-batshit Christian people. Still, other than that, they’re just keeping it clean for the kiddies. And it’s a good thing, too.

Mighty Jack and the Goblin King, a graphic novel featuring kids traveling through a magic portal and fighting monsters, was taken off the shelves when a citizen filed an objection because, in the book, the sister yells at her brother, “Jack, you ass! Stop it!”

Thank fucking Christ! We can’t have that kind of potty-mouth language brainwashing our kids! It might cause them to think impure thoughts while they’re hiding under their desks.

Maybe I’m a little grumpy right now.

Not that it’s showing. I ran into a friend yesterday that I hadn’t seen since my dog died. She said she was sorry, and a stranger standing next to us said, “Oh, that’s so sad! Did you adopt her?”

“No,” I said, “She was my biological beagle.”

Some friend. She didn’t have to pinch me that hard.

At any rate, I’m leaving town and heading to Portugal for two weeks, where the scenery is winding and colorful, and very different. It’s with a group of, I believe, ten people, none of whom I know, and I don’t speak a word of Portuguese, so right there the damage potential is limited. It’s a writing course/retreat thing, and I’m utterly out of my depth and not quite looking forward to it, but I do intellectually understand what an idiot I am for not quite looking forward to it.

I shall endeavor to write things worthy of banning. Or at least, I shall endeavor to write, which is more than I’ve done for the last few weeks. 

I’m bringing a Kindle full of books, many episodes of shows downloaded on the iPad, and this laptop. There’s an even chance I’ll avail myself of some of it, or none of it, and end up sitting, staring at cans of tinned fish for the next 16 days.

Yeah. Maybe a little grumpy. Time for some fresh air between these ears.

People don’t take trips, trips take people. – John Steinbeck

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Morning Teaistisms

I don’t think we need to take “morning” and “tea” too literally, do you?