The randomly chosen winner of my January blogroll contest is Susan of Girls in White Dresses. Susan, send me you address using the contact form and I’ll get your prize off to you.

I wish you all peace and joy. Thanks for spending your time with me.

The Book Nook reviewers write about every type of book you can think of: fiction, non-fiction, Historic, romance, thrillers, mysteries, Christian, science fiction, fantasy, you name it. If it comes in book form, it’s subject to review. Not only have I found a lot of great books to read on this site, I’ve had fun debating the qualities of books I’ve already read. If you like to read in any capacity, The Book Nook is a great resource.

Right now we’re working on revamping The Book Nook with a new design, and we’re also recruiting new reviewers. There are no minimum or maximum posting requirements, you just post as you read and as you like, no pressure. If you think you might like to participate, email Ronnica at “Ronnica at IgnorantHistorian dot com” and let her know you’re interested.

On that post, Jenn wrote this comment:

“We need more grammar and punctuation and proper pronunciation police–sometimes I wonder what this world is coming to.”

At one time I agreed with that sentiment. Even though I’m far from perfect in the grammar department myself, I slapped on a badge and went around rudely correcting everyone.

Yep, I was rude, I just didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I was being helpful, making a difference, albeit with my nose in the air. Then one day I was checking out an internet forum - I don’t remember the topic - and came across a thread that had been hijacked by grammar police. Here was a woman innocently asking for help with something completely unrelated to grammar, on a website that had nothing at all to do with grammar, and every single response consisted of attacks on her writing.

Stuff like:

“Don’t you know it’s rude to post on a forum using all caps? It looks like you’re shouting at everyone.”

“Did you even finish high school? It’s not ‘Sometime’s I want to kill myself,” it’s “Sometimes I want to kill myself!”

I jest, no one was discussing suicide, I just wanted to illustrate the cruelty of the responses.

I do think grammar is important, but over the years I’ve come to realize that it truly isn’t an indication of overall intelligence. My brother, for example, is MENSA material, and has no idea how to use an apostrophe, or even how to spell “apostrophe.” I believe that good grammar isn’t simply a learned skill, it’s often a talent. Many people simply don’t have this talent. If I’m right, it makes no more sense to come down on someone for their bad grammar than it does to deride them because they don’t know how to play the trumpet.

Grammar and language are always changing. An old friend of mine is a linguist with UCLA. He told me that no textbooks existed for his linguistics classes because language changes so quickly that by the time the ink dried any text book would be obsolete. Rather than absolute rules that govern language and grammar, he learned about the things that influence language and grammar and cause them to change.

One example is the old idea that you must never end a sentence with a preposition. This is no longer true, even Grammar Girl agrees:

I’m going to start calling this “grammar myth number one” because nearly all grammarians agree that it’s fine to end sentences with prepositions, at least in some cases.

The internet has opened up new avenues of expression, and most of them require some degree of writing. There are blogs, forums, twitter, email, and more. Therefore more and more people who previously would not have considered themselves writers are becoming so in a sense, and not all of them know how to dangle a participle. Some of them are in fact writing new grammar law that leave traditionalists flabbergasted.

Here’s an example of an actual conversation on a gaming forum I used to read back when I was a g4mer grrrrr1. (My translation in italics, obscenities bleeped by me as well.)

- “.ace? wtf?!” What kind of file is this? I’ve never seen this kind of file before and therefore am unsure as to how I ought to proceed. Can someone please explain?

- “It’s zipped you jaja motherf***er.”This file is compressed, you moron, you have to decompress it. You must be from Brazil, because everyone in Brazil is stupid and unfamiliar with file names, and has intercourse with their mothers!

- “i count at last 80 groups of UR there its probadly 720 ppl so grats with this perfect won and after that you still cry about our numbers, skills, epics, etc??? what the f*** with you guys?” After viewing this video, it is clear to me that the clan known as Ultima Ratio (UR) has no right to complain about my clan’s vast numbers, as they have vast numbers themselves, as well as superior armor and weapons that were probably purchased on ebay rather than earned within the game’s user agreement’s specifications. So in the spirit of sarcasm, allow me to congratulate you on this amazing win, which was based entirely on numbers rather than skill!

If I were to post on this forum using the actual grammar and spelling I learned from the California public school system, I would be (1) outed as a girl (2) likely banned from the forum and (3) repeatedly PK’d (player killed) within the game until I retired from shame. I kid you not.

There are definitely times and places for which proper grammar is important. One of my favorite bloggers, Minnesota Matron, frequently posts the horrific emails sent to her by her students. Common sense would dictate that a student would take care when addressing the person responsible for grading their written work. If ever you want to be taken seriously by the world at large, proper grammar is a must.

At the same time, using proper grammar in places like gaming forums and myspace will make you look like a pompous jackass. And when you’re text messaging, proper grammar would about kill your thumbs. In fact, I refuse to use that atrocious text language myself, so I simply refrain from texting most of the time.

And so I’ve become aware that I was using my grammar police badge as a weapon to compensate for my own intellectual shortcomings. I was belittling people, and I knew it, and I liked it.

And therefore I must disagree. We do not need more grammar police. We need better education. And failing that, we need to chill out!

I am cheap, so I buy the bulk package of bacon ends and pieces and divide it up for different meals. I fried the bacon pieces, then put them aside to drain on a paper towel while I fried the pepper and onion in the bacon grease. Then I chopped up the bacon and assembled the pizza.

Now the cheese can pose something of a quandary when assembling a pizza. Do you put it on before the other toppings or after? Well, it depends on what you’re going for. Cheese that is layered between the sauce and the toppings will be smooth and melty, whereas pizza sprinkled on top will brown and crisp. You can do one or the other or both.

When you add meats, it’s important to realize that they will usually shrink during the baking process. When I use pepperoni I will start at the outside of the crust and make concentric circles, actually layering the edges of the pepperoni a bit, intending for each piece of pizza to be loaded with pepperoni. But when I pull it out, somehow a good two thirds of the pepperoni will have disappeared and each piece of pizza will have at most three slices of pepperoni. Dryers do it to socks, ovens do it to pepperoni. I guess we’ll never know where it all goes.

Anyway…

Survey says: Oddly enough, it tasted like barbecue. I’m not sure why. But overall the saltiness of the bacon added to the saltiness of the pesto was overkill. It was good otherwise. I think the toppings would be fine with a milder sauce, or it would be good as is minus the bacon. Brad made no comment other than “It didn’t have to be the pesto, just something tomatoey,” although he specified the pesto when I made my weekly menu. It’s amazing how men can rewrite history. The kids wouldn’t touch it.

• If the child locks are not set on a car’s doors, and you’re going 75 down a highway with orange barrels set out on the shoulder for miles straight to prevent anyone from pulling over for any reason, your child will open the door.
• A child that has been deprived of fiber for three days will survive, but will not poop.
• If you can’t find something, you’re probably sitting on it.
• If, despite all odds, you arrive on time for a photo appointment with children groomed and polished and well fed, there will be customers there before you who will keep you waiting for another hour while they debate the merits of sepia and vignette.
• One’s hair always looks better in a mirror immediately before a photo session, then appears to have been slept on in the resulting pictures.
• A baby can shoot poop across a room with the force of a motorized watergun.
• My dad is an ABBA fan.

I don’t have time for a proper post right now, but here are some of the portraits we had done.

Us

Brad’s mom and most of the grandkids

Jessamine and her cousin Abigail, AKA “My Abby friend!”

*Another Terry Pratchett quote.

Okay, here goes.

1. Did you ever get in trouble as a kid? How? I’m afraid I was actually a very well behaved kid. I got grounded once for roller skating without telling my mom first, but it wasn’t much of a punishment because I never went anywhere. Another time I got in trouble for messing with my brother’s piggy bank, but I was framed. I guess the worst thing I did was when my brother and sister and I vandalized our church. My mom worked at the church a few hours a week dubbing sermon tapes and we were set loose on the property. It was out in the middle of nowhere in the desert so there wasn’t a whole lot to do. We broke into the Sunday School building and tried to make it look like aliens had invaded. I don’t think we were punished though, being caught was punishment enough.

2. We’re having a potluck dinner. What dish do you love to make as much as you love to eat it? I actually don’t enjoy cooking much. I do it out of necessity. If I ever get rich I’ll hire a cook before I hire a maid. I’d probably bring a cake or something. Or I’d stop by Dion’s and pick up one of their gourmet chicken salads, which are to die for.

3. What, besides reading, is your guilty pleasure? You should have said “besides blogging,” because that’s pretty much it. Reading and blogging. I used to do a lot of hiking and I really enjoyed that, but it’s kind of hard to do with little kids, maybe when they’re older. But left to my own devices it’s pretty much just blogging and reading.

4. What vision do you have for your family ten years from now? I don’t. I try not to look too far ahead because it’s scary. I watched a documentary awhile back that said the world is going to end on December 26, 2012, because that’s when the Mayan calendar stops. Most likely they just ran out of space, or maybe that’s as high as they could count. But I can’t get that date out of my head. If the world is still here, Brad would like to be in an Earth Shelter house on our own acreage, and I’d like the kids to be part-time homeschoolers, part-time college goers. I guess that’s about as ambitious as I get. Hopefully I will have had my boob job by then too.

5. What superpower would you really like to have? This is one I’ve always fantasized about. I’d love to be able to freeze and unfreeze time at my will like Evie in Out of This World. Just think of all you could accomplish if you could do that.

If you’d like to be interviewed by me, just say “interview me” in your comment. I’ll interview the first five people that ask.

I just finished reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Normally I’d write about it at The Book Nook, but it was already discussed on there awhile back.

I didn’t actually know what the book was about before I picked it up, just that it was very thick and supposed to be good. Thickness counts a lot for me when I choose a book to read. I read pretty fast and am disappointed when I finish quickly, so a good thick book that will last me awhile is a good find. At 991 pages, this one qualified.

And yes, it was good. It was hard to put down. It definitely satisfied my need for a good, meaty, extended plot. And everything fit together well. All of the counter-plots were interwoven perfectly, so that they not only made sense, but sewed everything up just right. It drives me nuts when a book leaves something up in the air, I suspect that when a writer does that she wasn’t sure where to go next and decided on an Emperor’s New Clothes technique, ending with a vague metaphor that could mean anything and will make you look stupid if you admit you don’t understand what the writer meant by it. I also dislike it when a writer spends so much time on one aspect of the story that when she switches to another you’re shell-shocked. Ken Follett masterfully brings all aspects of his story together and leaves no loose ends.

The Pillars of the Earth is described as a spy thriller, but that’s not really accurate. It does have some espionage and many thrilling bits, but it’s more of an Historical epic. It’s about various clusters of people living in an earldom in early 1100’s England. Monks, nobles, merchants, and craftsmen mainly that interact with and against each other. There is a plot and it is good, but it’s mainly there to take the reader through various interesting aspects of life in that period in that place.

Ken Follett seems to be a writer that likes to play God. He wanted to teach us about History, and he invented a set of characters to do so. He used these characters like lab rats, poking and prodding and bashing them with tragedy after tragedy. When I was on page 90 I put the book down and told Brad, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take! This poor family has been trough every travesty imaginable and I’m afraid of what could be next!” He glorifies the bad guys and prosecutes the good guys, but the bad guys fall in their glory and the good guys are glorified in their prosecution. There’s a certain sense of justice that is unfortunately not present in the real world, but if it couldn’t be found in books I wouldn’t bother with the things.

I have two complaints about this book. It seems unfair to complain about such a good book, but I feel it has to be said.

First, Follett goes into way too much detail about architecture and masonry. I realize it’s a book about building cathedrals, but the vast majority of people just aren’t interested in the physics behind flying buttresses and pointed arches and Euclidian mathematics. And he goes on with this stuff for pages and pages. I learned quickly when to skim through these parts, they rarely contained any information essential to the plot.

Second, Follett needs to learn a few things about writing female characters. I appreciate the fact that the females are strong, but he goes overboard to prove himself here. It’s like affirmative action in literature. Yes, let’s show how strong women can be, but let’s do it realistically, shall we? He has a real issue with the Madonna-Whore complex many male writers seem to suffer from. They can’t decide if women should be saintly mothers or nymphomaniacal whores. They want both, and that’s rarely possible. Why do they have to be either? He also has unrealistic ideas about a woman’s view of her body. For example, one woman is worried because she’s afraid her breasts are too big to be attractive. Gimme a break! And he goes too far with pubic hair. He describes it in terms of botany, generally as it relates to shrubs, rather large ones. He refers to a “surprisingly large bush of hair” more than once. It seems that he writes this way because he thinks women will appreciate it. He is wrong.

Oh yes, and there is far more rape than pillage in this book. It makes me wonder at Follett’s own sexual health.

Beyond that, the most surprising aspect of the book for me was the death of the bad guy. All through the book he is as horrible as you can imagine, and you wish he’d just die already. When the time finally comes, even though you know he thoroughly deserves it, you can’t help but pity him and wish things could have been different.

The end, I’m getting in the shower, I’d love to hear opinions of others that have read this book. I have the sequel on hold at the library. I hope it’s nice and thick too. I’ll be looking for more from Follett, but I hope he’s learned about personal grooming.

No, that’s not Pizza #3. And yes, you are welcome to wonder at the mentality of someone who will make her own bread and pizza dough but not macaroni and cheese. But really, how far do we have to take these things? It starts as innocently as homemade bread, next thing you know you’re expected to be out under a tree with a butter churn, in a starched apron and a Ma Ingalls updo. Let’s not get carried away here. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Anyway, I did spend some time investigating alternate pizza dough techniques and recipes. It was like stumbling upon a new religion. People really take this stuff seriously! I mean, I appreciate a good pizza dough just as much as the next guy, if not more, but come on people, it’s pizza! You know, the stuff of sleepovers and movie nights, not spiritual enlightenment!

At any rate it was interesting reading. I’m a big believer in balance, but it seems that the path to the perfect pizza crust experience lies in extremes, keeping the raw dough very cold and the rise slow, then a fast and furious baking at 800 degrees! I kid you not. 800 degrees. My oven goes up to 500. So my pizza nirvana will just have to be the pinnacle of mediocrity.

This Week’s Pizza

Going with the New Mexico theme, I tried too hard. I forgot the rule that understatement is usually the best statement. There was a lot of stuff in this pizza, but it was about as harmonious as a tomcat choir.

I used my usual crust recipe. For the “sauce” I made a paste of black beans, garlic, and olive oil. Then I sprinkled a layer of shredded queso fresca, Mexican cheese. Then chunks of sweet onion, quartered grape tomatoes, sweet corn, and fire roasted green chile, then a drizzle of olive oil.  It was a pizza of diversity.

Survey Says It was good, but too busy. Everything was delicious in its own right. The tomatoes were very tomatoey, which is what I was going for there. The chile was smoky and mild. The queso was melty. But the paste melted into the crust, making it soggy, and there was no balance. I enjoyed it. Brad tolerated it. The kids picked off the corn and cheese. The bean paste might be good as a cracker spread or something, but not as a pizza topping.

Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic? “If you want to push something down, you have to pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right.” It’s…
The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage…
Mr. Furious: …your rage will become your master? That’s what you were going to say. Right? Right?
The Sphinx: Not necessarily.

Recently in a conversation I meant to say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” but it came out as “you can’t teach a new dog old tricks.” I realized that this is equally true. We constantly repeat History because we can’t learn from others’ mistakes. So I started to have fun with it. Here are some others.

Every thorn has its rose.

Don’t pay with wooden nickels.

Don’t fry the egg that will hatch the golden goose.

If you’ve only got one basket, don’t fill it up with eggs.

All that’s gold does not glitter.

Policy is the best honesty.

Bliss is ignorant.

You eat what you are.

Trees don’t grow on money.

The blogroll, continued… I’ve decided to reset the blogroll every month. It’s a little overlong barely two weeks into the year. And I will also have a random drawing with a fabulous little prize for someone from that list. This fabulous prize will never be worth more, or possibly less than a dollar, because I’m poor.** And it will never be heavier than one ounce or larger than a standard first-class envelope.

The prize for January is this cute little pack of Emergency Emerys from Avon. Six little emery boards packaged in a matchbook. I’ve always had a weakness for mini things, and couldn’t resist ordering one for myself, and one for one lucky blogroller. That’s right, I paid for this with one dollar of my very own money.

Suggestions? For this week’s pizza, I was thinking about doing a New Mexican pizza, but I can’t seem to think any further than green chiles. By the way, I must make sure you realize that in New Mexico it is a chile, not a chili. Pronounced CHEE-leh, not CHILL-ee. Chili is a bowl of bean stuff, a chile is an spicy oblong vegetable. This vocabulary is unique to New Mexico.

Anyway, what else should go on a New Mexican pizza? What do you think of when you think of New Mexico? We’re a little bit Mexican, a little bit Navajo, and a little bit $4 latte.