Apr. 12th, 2009

masterofmidgets: (midnighter/Apollo)
Did you know that merely mentioning The Gay automatically makes your book porn? Amazon sure thinks so!

In order to limit the visibility of adult material, Amazon has been stripping the sales rankings (and searchability) from a number of books based, apparently, on some fairly broad and INCREDIBLY MORONIC criteria. Books that are marketed as erotica are included - but so are non-explicit GLBT romance novels, non-fiction books about homosexuality/homophobia, YA and kids' books about sexuality, classics with GLBT themes, gay parenting books - basically anything with any kind of GLBT themes. Cause Heather Has Two Mommies is just packed with lesbian porn, don't ya know! Meanwhile, many books with explicit heterosexual sex that aren't marked are erotica are being left with their rankings.

SO MUCH FAIL. I assume this is something along the lines of DeleteGate - Amazon got complaints about adult material, got all freaked out, and started yanking everything that came to mind without thought or reason or any consideration of the PR nightmare this would cause in the Twitter age. Not deliberately discrimatory, per se, but still fucking dumb and bigoted in effect. I'm a pretty frequent Amazon shopper, but I think I'll be going elsewhere until this clears up.

It's not like this is a new stupidity - I know Marvel has had a policy for awhile that comics with GLBT themes/characters have to be marked for adults, thus severely limiting their marketability. It is just mind-boggling to me - what do people really think is going to happen? Oh no, my kids now know there are gay people in the world, whatever shall I do? Newflash: if your kids are gay, no amount of shielding them from the existence of homosexuality will change that, and if they are straight, no amount of exposure to gayness will turn them. All this does is engender hate and bigotry.

http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html - a list of books that have been removed from Amazon's sales rankings
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy - a petition to Amazon protesting this policy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html?ie=UTF8&type=email - contact Amazon directly at their support page
Amazon Rank - Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is doing a google bomb

masterofmidgets: (batman)
My List O' Things I've Accomplished Today:
  • went shopping - got two weeks' worth of groceries at Trader Joe's (mmmm cheese), and four pairs of awesome socks at Wal-Mart. Money well spent.
  • did laundry - I only left it for two weeks after I came back, which is not at all bad! And I did not dragged off into the depths of hell by the demons I am still vaguely convinced lurk in the basement, definitely a plus.
  • cleaned my room - or at least my half of my room. The top of my fridge was getting seriously scary, and my desk was as always a disaster area. Don't know how long it will last, but at least it's tidy for a little while.
  • did my FAFSA and CSS Profile - well, mostly. I have my mom's info all filled in, I just need to wait for my dad to finish doing my taxes so I can put in my tax info and submit it. I might not make the deadline, but I should only miss it by a few days or so. And my mom and I totally did not get into a screaming fight this time!
  • learned that I do not at all like Sylvia Plath. Which I think I already knew, but it's nice to have it reaffirmed. I have every amount of respect and understanding for people IRL who suffer from depression, but I have little to no patience with writers who bang on and on and ON about how difficult their life is, and how miserable are because they are such an delicate artistic flower and no one understands them. Bleh. I can appreciate her skill on a technical level, but on a personal level I really hate her poems.
  • learned that Marvel Adventures: Avengers vol 7 is the best book in the history of ever, OMG. In a single book, it has: a Civil War pastiche about take-out; Karl, everyone's favorite henchman; brain-swapping, superpowered baseball with Galactacus, Devourer of Worlds; the Avengers at the state fair; the Hulk chasing a pig, and Steve and Tony going on a date. How does this title manage to be so consistently made of awesome when everything else Marvel is putting out sucks so much?
And now I am playing Sims and reading Tale of Genji for my Religions class tomorrow, and in my near future there may be rather a lot of Xander/Spike fanfiction, because I am rediscovering Buffy. Fun!
masterofmidgets: (midnighter/Apollo)
Because gayness does not mean pornography, or lack of literary merit, here are three sonnets by William Shakespeare, all about the poet's love for a fair young man.


Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 20


A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Sonnet 55

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.



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