Department of Book Reports: The Virtual Trade Show

Wednesday, the Day Before: We're so Proud!!!
In preparing for our trip to the up-coming tradeshow, we've been perusing the schedules. And here on page 12, the intro bios for Friday Author Breakfast leads off with:

“When we think of Nancy Pearl, we remember a remark made by the teen-aged son of Seattle booksellers, who, at the time, was uninterested in a rather long-winded author speaking at a PNBA show. "Who does he think he is?" the kid asked. "Nancy f#$&ing Pearl?"

Oh yeah. That's our boy! Quoted in the Official Show Program. We are so getting Nancy to sign one for him! BTW, I'll be the stand-up Mystery expert for Nancy's Librarian-in-Training: U-Dub Campus, sometime this Spring, TBA. Should be fun.


Thursday, Day One: Educational Seminars of a top secret nature. As Booksellers we are sworn to secrecy about today’s proceedings. Lunch has Michael Powell being interviewed by John Moe.
More top secret meetings and a light dinner provided by Komenar Publishing and The Habitual Reader. Drinks in the bar with John Moe author of Conservatize Me! How I tried to Become a Righty withn the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannitty, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky, and the usual suspects among the booksellers. Of course we close the bar.

Friday, Day Two: Author Breakfast at 8 am. Yes, we are there, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Seattle Mystery favorite, Michael Buckley talks of his YA “Sisters Grimm” series, Robert Michael Pyle’s love letter to rural Southwestern Washington, Sky Time Gray’s River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Past, Arthur Phillips reads from his 3rd novel, Angelica. And then Nancy Pearl is introduced. Our Librarian Goddess, tells us of children’s literature in Book Crush. The phrase on everyone’s lips this week end was “Nancy f#$&ing Pearl”.
Today the trade show floor is open with displays from publishers, book wholesalers and vendors. So, after being on our feet all day, We retire to to the bar. There’s the big award winner: Jess Walter! Bridget Kinsella! Neil McMahon! Then duck out to the autographing tables for Kathleen Alcala, Michael Burke, Anosh Irani and others.
Dinner is actually pretty good banquet Salmon. We are at Jess’ table for his award, and I sneak to the hostess a rumor about Jess and Sherman Alexie’s basketball rivalry. But first the other honorees: Ivan Doig gets his 6th award, David Biespiel for poetry, Iain Lawrence for Gemini Summer.

And the most moving stories are from Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, authors of Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, While hiking in Pakistan, Mortenson was rescued by the locals, and learned the meaning of the tea in the title: The first cup, you are a guest, the second cup, you are a friend, but with the third cup, you are family. And to that end, he has been building schools, 55 now, to promote literacy and end ignorance in this corner of the world.
David James Duncan, has written Brothers K and The River Why. Now, in God Laughs and Plays, he explains why the “Christian Right” is wrong in their stranglehold on our country. His Adventist upbringing gave him a high tolerance for fundamentalism, but little tolerance for what he sees as their flawed take on religion. His essay, When Compassion Becomes Dissent is truly one of the most heart breaking and yet challenging speeches I’ve ever heard.
The evening ends with Jess’ acceptance speech about being at Ground Zero five days after 9/11. Jess talked about ghost-writing Bernard Kerlick’s “Autobiography”, while the boss was off bonking his publisher in the apartment that had been donated for police and firefighter’s rest breaks. That publisher was also Jess’, the now disgraced Judith Regan.

Saturday, Day Three. Author Breakfast with Patrick Carman, Ellen Curry-Wilson, Susan and Phil Ershler and Robert J. Wiersema (the Canadian Content that puts the ‘eh!’ in PNBA!)
Check out and then the long slog homeward. Our favorite roadside lunch: burgers at Bill and Bea’s in Centralia.

Now, I buy you a virtual ice cold BridgePort IPA and ask you to explore the links here. If you click on an author, you’ll go to their home page. If you click on a book title, you’ll go to the publisher’s editorial page.

We lost democommie™™™™®© somewhere on I-5, so he wasn’t able to embarrass us in front of our publishing friends.

These books are or will be available at Jackson Street Books, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, or fine Independent Bookstores everywhere.

--SeattleTammy

Nez's 2006 Colonizers of the Year Award!

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Actress Angelina Jolie picked up a new Baby of Color (BoC) from a Vietnamese orphanage Thursday. She arrived carrying her 5-year-old Child of Color, Maddox (whom she adopted from nearby Cambodia in 2002), and wearing a huge pendant sporting a photograph of 2-year-old Zahara, whom she adopted from Ethiopia. Together, Jolie and her Latest Brown Baby (LBB) went to a ceremony where Jolie was expected to detour to Laos, so she could adopt a third non-White child, officials said. When pressed, Jolie would not swear that she wouldn't "browse a bit" if she found any "exceptionally exotic-looking" infants along the way.

Before that, Jolie and her latest BoC were expected at the Department of Justice in Ho Chi Minh City where an official ceremony complete with real Vietnamese people will be carried out to complete the adoption, "all offical-Vietnamish-style," according to the film star. Vietnamese adoption officials confirmed to The Associated Press that Jolie was adopting these two new children so she could "have her own little Starship Enterprise."

It's as if I am the female Kirk,' Jolie said wistfully, a well-manicured hand on both Maddox's and Zahara's heads. 'And I get to steer these various third-world ethnicities to new frontiers. I mean, you have to admit, my life is like Star Trek. Because every day with these children is exciting, strange, enriching contact with alien races...and I get to do really exotic hair styles on them that just wouldn't work with my own children!'

'Listen, I'm a beautiful white woman, and these kids should grow up seeing my beautiful face. It will make them feel happy inside. Like the light of opportunity is shining down upon them every morning. They can look up and see a movie-star mommy and daddy every single day, and this will let them know that anything is possible in this life.'

'...and unlike the character of Captain Kirk on the bridge, I can be the bridge for these kids. The bridge to a new, exciting, world of possibility and designer clothes.'

—Angelina Jolie, The Unapologetic Mexican's 2006 Colonizer of the Year

Jolie, looking smashing in a snug black skirt and shirt, was preceded at the orphanage by a phalanx of private security guards and a translater who explained to the local media what "phalanx" meant.

Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt, Jolie's partner, and Shiloh, their biological child, did not make the trip to Vietnam.

Related Articles

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nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez blogs as the unapologetic mexican, and spends his spare time creating sweet, tan, babies.

Political Theater in Virtual Reality

My Inner Frenchman says he is preparing an interesting bit of political theater at Second Life. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Second Life, it's a virtual reality world that's kind of like the Sims, but with real people playing (millions of them) the characters. I'll let My Inner Frenchman tell you more.

I'm hoping to have everything ready by Monday, but I need a little help. I need at least one male and one female to drop by the site for a few minutes. I'll tell you what I need when you get there. I should warn you that it will be edgy stuff--just think of it as acting. I'll be on Second Life most of the day--I'm taking a few hours off in the afternoon and early evening to protest the war and spend some time with the family. Do a search for GenJCChristain Homewood and IM me when you get there. I'll teleport you to the location.

I think this has the possibility of getting some very funny, but unwelcome, media attention for one of our favorite Republicans.

I'll be doing more in virtual reality in the future. I'm thinking of opening up a club where the French can get together to discuss politics and betray America. Yearly Kos is getting into the act too. This year, you can attend sessions by logging into Second Life. From what I understand, YK is going to be employing some pretty cool technology to do it.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Other Confessions

By now, you've all heard that after years of harmless fraternity hazing and gourmet meals at Guantanamo, Bagram, and the most discerning Soviet-built interrogation centers in Poland, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed finally cracked and admitted to virtually every terrorist act Dick Cheney could think of. Human rights observers say he was tortured, but they're a bunch of god-damned American-hating liars. He was treated very well. Heck, the CIA even abducted his seven and nine year old sons to assure him of their safety.

In any event, his interrogation was successful. The news that he's confessed to beheading Daniel Pearl and planning 911 and other terrorist operations has been all over the news. But strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, the mediaslamunistofascists are not telling us the other acts of terror he's confessed to committing. That's why I'm listing them here:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Other Crimes:

• New Coke
• Formidable law blogger Ann Althouse
• Not sending enough troops in the initial Iraq invasion.
• Faking the deaths of Tupa, Elvis, and Jim Morrison, converting them to Islam, and hiding them out in a cave in Peshawar.
• Selling Vogon Star Cruisers to Hugo Chavez.
• The neglect of our wounded soldiers.
• Introducing Bill O'Reilly to the magical properties of loofahs and falafels.
• Telling Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame
• Paris Hilton
• Gonzales Prosecutor Scandal
• France
• Olestra's anal leakage side effect.

Battling the homomojo of the manly bulge

Dr. Albert Mohler, President
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Dear President Mohler,

Your attempt to create a biblical justification for "curing" homosexuality in the blastocyst-American community is reprehensible. By doing so, you've taken a very promising technology, the manipulation of genetic material in utero to ensure that tomorrow's generations conform to the dictates of authority, and turned it into something very, very ugly: an admission that homosexuality is genetic in nature.

You must retract your article immediately. Otherwise, we will no longer have an excuse to deny homosexuals the same rights we grant everyone else. It will mean the end to legal discrimination against homosexuals in the workplace and before the law. We will no longer be able to stop the spread of so-called "hate laws," which prevent us from witnessing for Jesus Christ with the Steel-Toed boots of Redemption.

Worst of all, focusing on a genetic cause will drain resources away from the real cause of homosexuality, the homomojo of the manly bulge, just at the moment when we finally have concrete proof of the terrible damage these bulges do to America's moral fabric.

I'm referring to the recent study by the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC that found that men are constantly checking out each other's packages. Here's an analysis the Center did of a picture of George Brett:



A man simply can't avoid a bulge like that. His eyes are immediately drawn to it. Then, he begins to think about sucking on a pepperoni stick, or worse yet, a polish dog. After that, it's only a matter of time until he wakes up, sticky and hurting, on the floor of one of those bars where everyone dresses like a biker but no one actually owns a bike. You know it. I know it. We've been there.

So instead of working up a biblical justification for in utero gene therapy, you should be looking for one that allows for bulge reduction surgery. That's the only way to end homosexuality. It's also a great way to stimulate the economy by increasing consumer demand for guns, SUVs, and products advertised on the tv show, 24.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Elsewhere: Dr. Mohler takes on willful barrenness.

Helmet tips to readers John Lucid and Peter.

Disco Rudy

Where Confederate-Americans get their news

Sources tell me that the Black Congressional Caucus will partner with both CNN and Fox to host Demislamunist presidential candidate debates. That confirms the rumors that Obama's podium is being placed in a balcony at one of the venues.

Agent Provocateurs Provokaters*

There are traitors among us, vile, America-hating subversives who work tirelessly to discredit conservatism by making it look ridiculous. Pretending to be patriots, they create blogs where they post rambling paranoid diatribes that are more akin to the Son of Sam's insane rantings than to any insightful political discourse. Readers see these exercises in schizophasia and assume that conservatism must be an ideology best suited for lunatics, psilocybin enthusiasts, and syphilitic dementia patients.

I know it's hard to believe, but it's true, and I'm going to begin exposing these agent provokaters* for the devious moonbatical libuslamunistofascist pretenders they are.

Let us begin with one of the worst, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs. Take a look at the word salad she tossed today:

The leftards are leading the dhimmicrats around by their tail and it ain't good. Owned. Lock, stock and barrel. This country needs two parties, not a handmaiden for the enemies of freedom, justice, pursuit of love and happiness.

My God! Did you catch that! She used a firearms term, "lock, stock, and barrel," to describe the dhimmicrats submission to the element of their party controlled by leftards and the handmaidens "for the enemies of freedom, justice, pursuit of love and happiness." Everyone knows the libonobos hate guns. Insane!

*Edited to remove Frenchness.

Trojan Nation

Pete Carroll
Head Football Coach
University of Southern California

Dear Coach Carroll,

I'm very concerned about the Trojan Football brand. Potentially, the "White Nation" incident could cost the program hundreds of millions of dollars. You'd be wise to hire a professional crisis manager to get you through this mess.

Don't get me wrong, I think you've handled it pretty well so far considering what you had to work with. It can't be easy to downplay the fact that white team members posted white supremacist graphics on their Facebook group site, but you found a way to do it by framing it as the kind of joke players are warned against posting on the internets tubes.

Now it's time for you to hire a real crisis manager to build on what you've accomplished. I'll warn you. Finding one who understands your needs won't be easy. Most of them will tell you that you need to show the world that you recognize the seriousness of the team's racial problems by dropping the players from your team and suspending them from USC. They just don't understand what that would do to your defensive backfield.

You need a crisis manager who will push the "joke" spin for all it's worth, someone who will book you to do TV interviews in black face, promote the team by marketing the guilty white players as "The Four Klansmen of the Apocalypse," and hire a choreographer to teach the Trojan Marching Band to march in the shape of a fiery cross during halftime.

Hey, George Allen needs a job. He'd be perfect. Please give him a call.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Actual graphics posted on Trojan Football "White Nation" Facebook group site:

Mr. Coulter's new show on Fox.

Helmet tips to readers Kim and Dave.

AIPAC opens another front in its ongoing war against Jews

Howard Friedman
President, American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Dear President Friedman,

The biggest complaint many of us more traditionally-minded Christian-Americans have against AIPAC is that it, like the media, banking, and matzoh industries, is controlled by the Jews. That's why I was so relieved when I learned that you've invited Pastor John Hagee to speak at your conference.

He's about as an accomplished an anti-Semite as you can find anywhere. Heck, he rivals David Duke on the Gibsonian scale of absolute Jew hating, but thankfully, like AIPAC, he's able to separate his anti-Semitism from his blind support for Israel. I mean here's a guy who blames Jews for both the Holocaust and the crucifixion of Our Lord and Savior; preaches that Jews are going to Hell, and prays for the day when the Middle East is cleansed of all non-Christians by nuclear fire.

So, how did you meet Mr. Hagee? Did he call to congratulate AIPAC for feeding anti-Semitic conspiracy theories by engaging in espionage against the United States on the behalf of Israel? No doubt that single incident sold more copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion than David Duke sold in all the years he's been hawking it. Or did something else bring you together?

Well, no matter how you met, you're together now. That's exciting. You're a perfect match.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Medicalizing Torture & Torturing Medicine

_{Image © Austin Cline
Original Poster: National Archives
Click for full-sized Image}

Revelations about the government's mismanagement of Walter Reed have been increasing in their seriousness. The public has learned not only that the problems extend far beyond that one facility, but also that many of those in charge knew about these problems years ago without having done anything to correct them. Even some Republican leaders knew about it, but refused to go public in order to save the military from embarrassment. All the suffering of wounded troops has occurred not because of a simple error or lack of information, but because our leaders haven't cared enough to treat wounded troops with the dignity and seriousness they deserve.

The most common framing of this story, at least by those who have the gall to criticize this administration, is that the failures in the military's medical care represent appalling mismanagement and/or a failure by the administration to "support the troops" in a manner that might match its rhetoric. Although these explanations are all appealing and all have perhaps some validity to them, I wish to take a bit of a detour and explore another, more fundamental, and perhaps more sinister connection.

This isn't the first scandal involving medical personnel of America's armed forces and the Iraq War. Now lost in the continuous rotation of fresh scandals were reports about the involvement of medical professionals in the torture of prisoners. Pretty much wherever torture occurs, medical personnel are complicit — their specialized knowledge of human biology and how to keep humans alive can be vital. Doctors and nurses are, for example, expected to treat injuries sustained during torture so that the victim can be made well enough to go through more sessions.

No competently run installation could have gone without medical personnel who at least knew and covered up for the soldiers, let alone those who might have actively helped. International law, not to mention basic standards of decency, require medical professionals to report mistreatment and torture. They are certainly prohibited from participating in any substantive manner, even if just to make it easier for torture and abuse to continue by patching up prisoners and sending them back to the meat grinder.

In 2004, CNN reported:

In one case, a medic inserted a catheter into the body of a prisoner who died under torture "to create evidence that he was alive at the hospital," Miles writes. And he writes about the family of an Iraqi man taken into custody by U.S. troops who was found months later in a hospital. "He was comatose, had three skull fractures, a severe thumb fracture and burns on the bottoms of his feet." But the man's U.S. medical report made no mention of the injuries, saying only that heat stroke had caused him to suffer a heart attack, which resulted in the coma, Miles said.

That same year, the BBC reported:

Writing in the medical journal The Lancet, Professor Steven Miles of the University of Minnesota says some collaborated with abusive guards. ..."Confirmed or reliably reported abuses of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan include beatings, burns, shocks, bodily suspensions, asphyxia, threats against detainees and their relatives, sexual humiliation, isolation, prolonged hooding and shackling, and exposure to heat, cold and loud noise," said Professor Miles.

He said there was evidence that some medics had played a part. "Government documents show that the US military medical system failed to protect detainees' human rights, sometimes collaborated with interrogators or abusive guards, and failed to properly report injuries or deaths caused by beatings," he said. "In one example, soldiers tied a beaten detainee at the top of his cell door and gagged him. The death certificate indicated that he died of 'natural causes...during his sleep'. After news media coverage, the Pentagon revised the certificate to say that the death was a 'homicide'.

"Although the US Armed Forces's medical services are mainly staffed by humane and skilled personnel, the described offences do not merely fall short of medical ideals; some constitute grave breaches of international or US law," he said. In an accompanying editorial, The Lancet called on US army medics to come clean. "Guidelines and codes of practice state that doctors, even in military forces, must first and foremost be concerned about their patients and bound by principles of medical ethics," it said. "Health care workers should now break their silence. Those who were involved in or witnessed ill-treatment need to give a full and accurate account of events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay."

The doctors, medics, and nurses who stood by silently while prisoners were being tortured were guilty of violating the most basic and fundamental medical ethics. Would you trust such people with the care of yourself, your spouse, or your children? I wouldn’t. People like this don’t even deserve to retain their medical licenses, much less to stay in the military.

What does any of this have to do with the Walter Reed scandal? There are two connections which I think should be made. First, the abuse of prisoners by the military was not a morally isolated incident. Torture is dehumanization — both of the victim and of the torturer. When an organization begins to use torture, it can only do so at the price of devaluing human beings at their most basic level. Such dehumanization cannot be limited to merely the enemy, though, and must inevitably extend to one's own allies and supporters.

Once the American government and military authorized torture and abuse of the "enemy," the basis was laid for acts of dehumanization and the devaluation of members of the military themselves. Once the Iraqis became disposable, so did America's own military personnel. We should thus not be surprised to see wounded veterans kept in shabby conditions. Already in 2003 the Bush administration cared so little for military personnel and their families that "imminent danger pay" and "family separation allowance" were deemed "wasteful and unnecessary." How much more of a step was it to treat basic medical and psychological care as "wasteful and unnecessary"?

The second connection lies with the institution of medicine itself. I focus above on the use of medical professionals in the process of torture because medicine is supposed to be a profession focused entirely on the needs of other human beings. Although dehumanization is compatible with many organizations and professions, it undermines the very purpose and existence of medicine itself. If, however, medical professionals can be enlisted in dehumanization of "enemies," then it's even less of a step to allow medical institutions to treat our own veterans as disposable or to treat basic medical care as "unnecessary."

The scandal at Walter Reed can thus be connected to a deeper rot that runs to the very core of the Bush administration. It's not a "rot" of incompetence, though, but a moral rot that derives from the gross immorality of the people in charge. They claim to be led and supported by God, but of course it's easier to justify morally monstrous behavior if you think that God is on your side — if God sanctions it, then it must be OK. Bush doesn't care if everyone else stops supporting him because he knows God is on his side; how can that be the case without also concluding that every other human being is ultimately disposable?


This was originally a World War II poster which said "Keep Pitching with Both Hands, Brother."