Bitches be crazy.
Seriously.  People are fucking insane.

You may or may not know that I work in bookstore; in fact, I'm the assistant manager at a bookstore.  Well, now you do, which I suppose makes the last statement and this one moot.  I'm just going to move on with the story then.  A coworker asked me if we had any large print Bibles.  Our Bible stock is rather low right now, as we cannot actually order Bibles - they only come in miscellaneous pallets of religious books.  I'm not sure why it works that way, but it does.  Maybe it's because corporate assumes if they let us order Bibles, we would only order Bibles and the rest of our Religion section would suffer.  (It's not my fault that the Religion books that we have available for order are suck.)  Regardless, we cannot order Bibles.  We can't do it.  All of our employees know this, and in fact it's been stressed that we should not be telling customers we can order anything for them, because our old boss used to tell everyone he could order things that were certainly not in our warehouse.

There was a woman insisting that we had told her we could order her a large print Bible at the counter.  I went to take care of it.  "Ma'am, do you know who you spoke to?  Do you remember who told you that we could order the Bible for you?"

There was a momentary pause.  "The lady behind the counter.  She was short."

The only one of my employees that I would classify as short is Steve, and he's not all that short, and certainly not a she.  "When was this?"  We used to have a number of short female employees, but not since October.  "December."  Damn, that means that it wasn't anyone that had been laid off.

"Alright.  We don't have any large print Bibles right now, and I don't know who you spoke to, but I'm very sorry, we cannot order Bibles.  We have a very limited warehouse and we only receive Bibles when the warehouse has them in stock.  We have no choice in particular Bibles that come into the store."

There was a pause.  "I was told you would order large print Bibles."

"I understand.  I wish I knew who told you that, but it's simply not true."

She looked at me, and I saw a complete lack of understanding.

"I can show you our Large Print section.  This is the only Large Print we can order specifically."

She paused and looked up at the shelves of large print.  "So, there are Bibles here."

"No.  I can show you our Bibles, if you'd like."

I led her to the Bibles.  "It's a bit light right now because the warehouse doesn't have any Bibles for us, but here's what we have."

She picks up a black Bible from the middle of the top shelf and opens it.  "Is this the only one you have?"

"This whole section is Bibles.  They start here," I point, "and end here." I point again.

"Oh."

**********

Of course, she wasn't finished with me though.  She called me back a few minutes later.  "Can I ask you another question?"

I walked back towards the Bibles, dreading the question.  "What's up?"  I smile.

She holds up a random Bible.  "Is this a regular Bible?"

My jaw worked aimlessly for a moment.  A regular Bible.  What the fuck is that?  I'm pretty sure it's regular absorbency and not a maxi.  "Well, what kind of Bible are you used to?"

She holds up the same black Bible as before.  "I know this one is right because it says 'Holy Bible' on it."

Yeah, because we sell 'Unholy Bibles' too, obviously.   "This one is a King James Version.  So, this is the kind you're used to."  I made the leap that perhaps it was a translation issue.

"Yes, I don't want my Bible to be different than the one they read in church."

"Every church is different, uses a different translation."  I go through her stack of Bibles telling her which ones are which translations.

"But they'd all be the same, right?"

"No, they're translated differently."

Blank stare.

"The Bible wasn't originally written in English.  It's been translated many times, and translated from translations."

"I know, but they're all the same."

"The language is different."  I wracked my brain trying to come up with a way to explain this.  I pick up a King James Version.  "This is an older translation so it uses older English."  I pick up a New International Version.  "This is more recent, so the language is more modern."

I manage to escape for a few precious moments before she needs to be rung up.  "I hope these are all regular Bibles."  I only smile.  I finally learned my lesson.  Opening my mouth with this woman will only make me crazy.  I ring up the two Bibles, different versions, that she's brought up to the front.  She moves to pull out her wallet and gasps as though she cannot find her wallet.  "Hold on!" she barks.  She runs back to the Bible section.  Ten minutes later she returns with three more Bibles.  "Can you cancel that order?  I want these."

Very rarely have I been happier to see a customer leave my store.

You may have noticed that almost as soon as I said I'd be writing regularly again I sort of disappeared for a week.  Well, my computer got a virus, on Christmas Eve of all days.  On Christmas Day I got a beautiful 22" LED 1080P ViewSonic monitor and a 320GB external hard drive to back up all my pictures and writing.  Of course the virus weaseled its way into my registry and I could not get rid of it.  Regcure, Ad-Aware, and AVG were all useless.  Since my copy of Windows XP was not a legal copy (sorry, Microsoft - sort of) I couldn't even repair it.  My web browsers all stopped working and my disc drive wasn't recognizing DVDs.  So, I had a gorgeous monitor that is, by the way, bigger than my actual television that was basically completely useless.  I managed to get all my writing and music backed up, after about 600 restarts and praying that the OS would continue to boot. 

So I bought myself a Christmas present or three.  I bought a copy of Windows 7.  I've been meaning to upgrade for quite some time and just never got around to it and a wireless keyboard and mouse so I can change DVD episodes from my bed.  Merry Computermas to me!

When I was a freshman in college, which was almost six years ago, my parents bought me a computer, an HP.  My experience over the next few years taught me that HP makes great printers, but don't bother with their computers.  From the very first day that I had the computer it had sound card problems.  I could not listen to music and do anything else at the same time with out it making horrible sounds loudly.  I wasn't complaining too much, after all I was 18 and getting a free computer, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and set of speakers.  Obviously technology has changed quite a bit in the past six years.  Two years ago my ex upgraded his speaker system and gave me his, which I found out later are $150 speakers.  About a year ago, my ex-boyfriend and I built me a new computer with custom parts and what I lovingly call my "Star-Trek" case.  It is lime green with blue glowing speedometers that tell you how fast the fans are running and how hot the computer is.   Now that I've replaced the monitor, mouse and keyboard I can officially, without a doubt say, "BYE BYE HP!" and "Fuck you."

Through My Lens:
 
"She called in her soul to come and see."

Janie is born of rape, like her mother, though her grandmother raises her.  Janie is the first black woman (though she is very pale as black women go) of her family that has the chance to marry and move as she pleases.  Her grandmother protects her as far as she can, by marrying her off to a "good" man.  Janie is still a child at this point in the novel, following parental instruction.

She meets a man, Jody, who she falls in love with and runs off with - displaying her adolescent desire for rebellion.  She stays with Jody for twenty years, though he attempts to keep her "safe" by being overbearing and disallowing her to participate with the people in the town he Mayored.  He wanted her to be a rich, lofty woman.  During this time period is when Janie realizes that what she thought she wanted is maybe not what she really wanted, and only wanted it for rebellious sake.  She grows up, so to speak, though she is already 40 when Jody dies.

She falls, and falls hard for a man who has nothing to his name, Tea Cakes Wood.  To the horror of everyone in town, the woman they so highly regarded turned her back on her money and her things to love and be loved by a man who gambles and works seasonally.  Janie and Tea Cake have a deep, fantastic love.

This is the epic love story of a woman learning not only what it really means to love a man, but what it means to love herself.

From the Publisher
This novel about a proud, independent black woman was first published in 1937 and generally dismissed by reviewers. It was out of print for nearly 30 years when the University of Illinois Press reissued it in 1978, at which time it was instantly embraced by the literary establishment as one of the greatest works in the canon of African-American fiction.

Mesmerizing in its immediacy and haunting in its subtlety, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford—fair-skinned, long-haired, dreamy woman—who comes of age expecting better treatment than what she gets from her three husbands and community. Then she meets Tea Cake, a younger man who captivates Janie's heart and spirit, and offers her the chance to relish life without being one man's mule or another man's adornment.

Sacred Fire
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston draws a sharp portrait of a proud, independent black woman looking for her own identity and resolving not to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or romantic dreams. Like most lives of black women of the early 20th century (or any time for that matter), Janie Crawford's life, told here in her own sure voice, is not without its frustrations, terrors, and tragedies — in fact, it is full of them. But the power of her story comes from her life-affirming attitude: Through all the changes she goes through — once divorced, twice widowed (once by her own gun-wielding hand)-she kept a death-grip commitment to live on her own terms, relying only on her own guts, creativity, strength, and passion, and the power she drew from her community, to pull her through. In Janie, Hurston created a character that reflected her own strong belief that the most important mission we have is to discover ourselves.

[...]

Hurston, an anthropologist and folklorist, fills this novel with shotgun rhythms and the poetic language of her native south. Language in this novel is crucial; it is through the beautiful self- made idiosyncrasies of southern speech and storytelling that Janie expresses her own will toward self-definition. Their Eyes Were Watching God has been called the first African American feminist novel because of its portrayal of a strong black woman rebelling against society's restrictions — and the received wisdom of her Nanny, no less — to seek out her own destiny. But ultimately, this is not a novel that looks out to the world to make political protest or social commentary; it concerns itself with describing the power that lies within us to define ourselves and our lives as we see fit, unbound and unfettered by society's limitations and prejudices. As Alice Walker once wrote, "There is enough self-love in that one book — love of community, culture, traditions — to restore a world."

"I don't want to leave.  It's cold out there."  She buries her body, bundled against the cold, against his in the doorway.  "I'd rather just sleep here."

He glances outside and closes the door.  "We'll be warm at least for now."  He guides her chin up towards him and kisses her once twice three times, as she attempts to pull him even closer for comfort and warmth.

She sighs and pulls away.  "Fine.  I should go."

He kisses her one more time and opens the door.  "I love you."

As she crosses the sidewalk she answers, "I love you too."

As the door behind her closes, she steps into the grass, walking towards her car.  With the first step she begins to smile.  She looks down at her feet and grins at the white, sparkling grasses caught by the almost full moonlight.  It didn't feel as cold as she had been expecting.  She could see her breath, and the grass was frosted, but she was surprisingly not very cold.  The grin on her face never falters as she glances around the neighborhood with mischief in her eye and does a tip-toe dance all the way down the hill: crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.  The satisfying crunch, and the feeling of grass breaking under her feet is one of her favorite sensations in the world.  crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.  She almost reaches the bottom when she slips.  She barely catches herself before hitting the ground, looks around sheepishly and jumps into her car still smiling.

And the lyric that continues to circle her brain is, Lets get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.

Dear you trying to get SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson banned:  Go fuck yourselves.

Dear co-worker who has issue with Francesca Lia Block: Go fuck yourself.

To all of you in favor of banning any book, this one's for you.

Books are usually profane, racist, sexual, (and whatever other bullshit excuse you can come up with to ban books) etc. for a reason.  These books are often meant to be inflammatory.  Most of you that ban books have never looked past the words.  The message couldn't mean any less to you.  The only thing you see are the words themselves.  Of course language is important when writing a book, as obviously that's the means of communicating you point.  However, if you're only getting upset over phrasing it's really quite important to realize that phrases may be written in certain ways only to invoke a response.  The authors would appreciate you looking beyond the words.  Or, perhaps the book was written in a time period where that kind of language was appropriate (ex: many older references to African Americans).  Even the sex, sexual orientation, race, age, and political sway of the author will make a difference in tone.  It's important to know why the books are considered controversial - not just the fact that "OMG THEY SAY FUCK!"  or "HOLY FUCK IT SAYS NIGGER!"  or "RAPE IS PORNOGRAPHIC."

Block even says, "If my books create controversy and are challenged, I'm honored my books are a part of that. There are lots of great books that have been banned."