… and I feel fine.

But maybe not for long, if you believe any of the 2012 hype. You know, the Aztec calendar ends in 2012 (on 12/21, or 12/20, depending on who you ask). That could mean a new age of enlightenment dawns, or terrible catastrophe that destroys the world.

Which one do you think would make for a better movie? Here’s the trailer for “2012,” the latest end of the world movie from the guy who brought us the original Stargate and Independence Day. It was released to the interwebs today. Say what you will about his movies, but the image of a giant wave cresting the Himalayas is pretty awesome.

The scariest thing about 2012?

It’s a bizarre world. Remember Superman’s fortress of solitude from the Chris Reeve era? (Or the land mass grown from krypton crystals in the recent “Superman Returns”?) Well, they’ve got nothing on the real thing as shown by the good folks at National Geographic:

Yes, those are real people walking on real selenite crystals in a cave in Mexico, not a special effect. How awesome is that?

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So, what did you do this weekend? We traveled to Tallahassee to watch FSU students perform a play my son wrote (and which was first workshopped last May at Gulf Coast Community College). The play was one of five one-acts put on at the drama department. And the town was BUSY. Not only a game day but also Parents’ Weekend. Traffic was nuts. But we got to see some people we don’t see enough of, like Claire, who took us on a brief campus tour and joined us for the show, and Turner, who showed us various student housing (and who directed Nathan’s play), and JV, who just showed up unexpectedly. It was a beautiful autumn day, and there was a great sense of life and energy all around.

What was your weekend like?

Peace.

Okay, making a face once is understandable. Making it twice in the same debate? Fun-ny. You supply the captions:

Bill Murray warned us about the endtimes, when there would be cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.

But this has got to be related:

No one warned us that the four horsemen of the apocalypse might not even be ‘men.’

Go here for the real story.

Peace.

T

I don’t know what else to call it. “Exoskeleton” is a technical term.

But when you consider the people with reduced mobility that this could help, it’s a marvel of modern science by any name.

Check it out.

Okay, so a couple of fellows in Georgia claim to have recovered the body of a sasquatch. A press conference is scheduled for today.

And a cop says this is video of the fabled Chupacabra.

All in the same week?

Where are the UFO videos? Oh. Here’s one.

And here’s our own News Herald expedition to uncover the elusive Florida Skunk Ape.

It’s a bizarre world.

It’s a bizarre world.

Take this story, from the Nigerian Tribune: A cat gets run over by a motorcycle, turns into a middle-aged woman. Police remove her from the scene as the crowd is about to beat her to death. Instead, crowd beats another cat to death for fear it is also a shapeshifter. It dies a cat.

Believe it or not.

It’s a bizarre world. Thank goodness. Some examples: 

Is it a sky-scraper or an M.C. Escher drawing?

How about this six-legged fawn that’s recovering from an attack by dogs?

Or the fact that, despite a request from residents of the Aegean isle of Lesbos, Greece has decided not to outlaw the use of the word “lesbian.”

So yeah, entirely personal message.

My son is 20 today.

Halfway to 40, as his girlfriend says.

Two years older than his mom was when we married. One year younger than I was.

So happy birthday, boy. I love you.

Reactions to the Bay County School Board’s recent decision to ban “The Fighting Ground” by Avi continue to surface. 

There was this letter to the editor in Thursday’s paper.

Here’s what I said about it last week, and in the comments there you’ll find a letter from School Board member Pat Sabiston, one of three who voted to pull the book from school libraries.

Rosie O’Bourke, whom many regular readers of this blog will know, sent the following via email:

Extra, extra, read all about it – or not. The dark specter of censorship rises again in Bay County and is efficiently tucked under the proposed school closings in the meeting agenda and pushed through with little notice in the summer, while school is out. It’s brilliant!

For those of you who don’t remember the times of the last censorship battle, you may want to read Gloria Pipkin’s “At the School House Gate”. Back in 1986-87 Bay County became the laughing stock of the country when then superintendent Leonard Hall banned 64 books including such classics as Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and “The Merchant of Venice”, and novels such as “The Old Man and the Sea” and “The Red Badge of Courage”.

There were articles in the New York Times (see “Florida Officials Yield on Book Ban” published May 15, 1987) in the Wall Street Journal and in the Washington Post. There were interviews in the Oprah Show. A young reporter’s porch was bombed with an improvised explosive, fake bombs appeared inside teachers cars, and the lives of children whose parents chose to fight the book banning were threatened by telephone calls in the middle of the night. It wasn’t until a lawsuit was filed on constitutional grounds that the school board changed its policy to agree with the superintendent.

Still and to this day, there are books banned from that episode.

This time, however, it’s more insidious. “The Fighting Ground” is not a book that teachers are requiring students to read in the classroom. This is a library book, for goodness sake! No one is required to read it. And yet, one parent has read two pages from it and decided that the rest of the Bay County children must not be allowed to read it at all. Even more, three school board members, Donna Allen, John McFatter and Pat Sabiston voted to ban it from all Bay School District library shelves without even reading it. Thank goodness for Ginger Littleton and Johnny Brock, who both gave serious thought to the matter and who listened to the district’s book review committee’s recommendation in voting to keep the books on the library shelves.

As for the book, captured and dying soldiers don’t say “gee, wow, I hope they come back to save us soon!” They are desperate. They use desperate language. What an excellent opportunity to discuss the power of language with your child! Sheltering your children from the horrors of war will simply create a generation that glorifies war and justifies it for just about any reason.

The book is banned until June 30. Bay County parents, grandparents and others that care about civil liberties and constitutional rights should keep their eyes and ears open. There are those who will try to take your children’s first amendment rights away. And for those of us who have already fought this battle once before, we fight it at the polls as well, and we vote.

Rosie O’Bourke, Bay County grandparent

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Thanks for joining the discussion, Rosie. How about the rest of you?