Majcher.com

Icky and Emily are here again, sleeping on the living room floor. They're in for the weekend, trying to nail down the housing situation before they move down for good in May. We had dinner at Magnolia - it was their first time. I am chagrined that it took three visits for us to drag them over there. No big plans - they're going to be out house-hunting most of the time, and I think we're feeling pretty lazy. We'll see if anything good comes up.

I am realizing that I'm going to need a new laptop, and probably a sparkly new cellular gizmo, sooner than later. I mean, I have to keep up with all the other cool nerds, right? So, someone get on that, okay?

I picked up my monthly dose of science fiction yesterday - the newsstand around the corner, which has a dizzying supply of pornographic magazines and DVDs also carries Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF. There was a big kerfuffle a couple of months ago, where some atavistic moron in Michigan was snooping through her daughter's mail, and saw a bad word or two in a story in Asimov's, and went into a shrieking frenzy about how the school was allowing children - CHILDREN! - to buy "adult magazines" as part of some book fair or something. I have the issue in question, and while some of the stories may deal with mature matter, it seems like perfectly reasonable material for a fictional story in a publication written by adults, for adults - or, at least, adults without their heads up their asses.

The story, which was quite well written, involved a troubled, broken youth, who eventually became sexually involved with a scumbag dealer of some sort in order to get something that she wanted - it was not explicit in any way, but sure. Not Judy Blume, but certainly not Hot Tranny Asian Sluts #17, either. Anyway, the upshot is, since the red-blooded, white-bread bluenose is obviously far too busy to actually take interest in what her children are reading, maybe sit down and discuss it with them, she took matters into her own hands. After haranguing the school for a while, forcing them to remove the offending matter from their sales curriculum, she called up the publisher, and demanded that they put warning labels on all of their stories, so that the children of America would be safe from harm. Yes, you did read that correctly. Now lazy parents everywhere can rest easily, knowing that the final line of defense is in place - a warning, in bold print, which says, "THIS MATERIAL UNSUITABLE FOR MINORS - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT READ. (unless you want to be totally cool)" I'm feeling safer already.

Anyway, I have a subscription card for Asimov's filled out, sitting right in front of me. The warnings are reported to start in next month's July issue. If that report is incorrect, this card will go in the mail, and I will enjoy the modern convenience of fresh science fiction delivered to my front door every month. If the next issue I buy contains this warning, it will likely be the last issue that I buy from them for quite some time.

Also, I saw a purported recent picture of the former Baby Jessica today - the one that fell down the well in 1987 or so. If it's not a fake, holy crap, she's hot now. (It's a fake, duh.)