{look upon my works, ye mighty}

Whatever you're doing right now, stop. Go read Little Brother instead.

Little Brother is the best book I've read all year. This would have more meaning if it wasn't the start of the year, so let me rephrase that. Little Brother might be the most awesome book that I could possibly read this year.

There's an excellent summary of the book here, so I'm not going to hash over the book. Instead, I'm going to give you bullet points as to WHY you should read it.

• The author references our culture. Flashmobs, Linux distros, game systems being cheap but the games expensive, livejournal, Flickr, everything. And he gets it right! You've seen what happened when the media tried talking about Anonymous versus Scientology. This guy actually manages to create a believable 17-year-old narrator.
  
• It's about Homeland Security and what happens when safety trumps freedom. The title's a homage to 'Big Brother' but unlike 1984, this book is set in our times. Modern times. It's much easier to get sucked into this book because the protagonist is our age and deals with our tech, instead of being an adult with a forbidden love affair.
  
• On that note, the book deals with the generation gap and how adults are more likely to buy into the scare tactics of the media. But it doesn't present all adults as rigorously inflexible. There are good guys amongst the grown-ups, and bad guys amongst the kids, and the way that he manages to make moral ambiguity and self-righteousness a major theme of the novel is amazing.
  
• Awesome female chars. There's not just the standard love interest and the best friend chick, but also female chars with authority, female chars who are bad guys, and female chars who rock the geek world. They're depicted as being as much a part of the world as the male protag is, and the author's Net-savvy enough to even have the protag be wary of one girl that IMs him because the protag knows how many guys like pretending to be girls online.
  
• Race issues! It's a bit of a throw away in that it's not a major theme of the book, but that's part of what makes the sudden discussion of them so fantastic to me. There's a quick convo between the protag and a friend of his about how the friend will suffer more if they're caught, and the protag acknowledges that yes, brown people have the scales balanced against them. It's a tiny little thing, not a major part of the book, but oh, how fantastic it is to se it acknowledged as a part of real life instead of glossed over or forgotten about.
  
• Neil Gaiman, Scott Westerfeld, Brian K Vaughn, and I love it. I fully intend on buying copies IRL and making my friends read them. Since most of you are lucky enough to not live near me, I'm instead devoting the entirety of this post to trying to convince you to read it.

You know what else is awesome? The author himself and his thoughts on ebooks and sharing books/music online. His explanation for why he gives his books away for free online is quoted below, because it's just said so well that any attempt on my part to sum it up would pale in comparison to his original words.

I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, "Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free -- because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash." Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they'd discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift. When it comes to my favorite writers, there's no boundaries: I'll buy every book they publish, just to own it (sometimes I buy two or three, to give away to friends who must read those books). I pay to see them live. I buy t-shirts with their book-covers on them. I'm a customer for life.

( Neil went on to say that... )

Love him, read the book, and spread word of the book around as much as you can. This guy is one of us. He talks about our technology, he writes about our world, and he's good at it. He's a geek to the core, and one who doesn't back down from tackling politics head-on. I'd fangirl about it more, but I'm going to see if he's written anything else.

Link of the Day: HIV Neutralized.'

With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralise the HIV virus. The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents the HIV virus from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population.

Forget Dumbledore being gay, THIS has to be the best news of the month! ♥

Link of the Day: COLORlovers.

Basically, COLORlovers is a site with thousands of palettes for different colors, but that's not why I'm reccing it. I'm reccing it because of its partner site, iStockphoto. Go to this page. See next to the big square of color, where it says 'find photos with this Color' and has an iStockphoto button?

Click it.

You'll get thousands of images themed around that color.

That is why I am in love with that site. ceresi was the one to intro me to COLORlovers in her most recent post, but I have to admit, iStockphoto is what's currently got me enraptured.

Obviously, if blue isn't your cup of tea, you can find images in whatever other color you prefer. And they have lots of colors.

Link of the Day: PWNED!

Short version of the story is that a guy found out someone had hotlinked to an image on his site, and replaced with a series of photos depicting self-castration. But that's not the cool part. The cool part is that all the positive responses like 'I'd hit that' and 'I just came' remained in place which is fucking hilarious when contrasted with the new photo.

Click the links the guy provides only if you have a strong stomach and don't mind NSFW material. XD

...And if you have no interest in seeing people be PWNED, click the link to take a look at the castration process; use it as a litmus test to see how badly the Internet has damaged your cringe-reflex.

Link of the Day: Making Up is Hard to Do.

Fandom/LJ, definitely NC-17. XD

This story went a long way towards restoring my good will for LJ. Fandom is coded as female, LJ as male, and the dialogue in that fic is wonderful. I usually veer away from reccing fics as Links of the Day since LotD is meant to be interesting for anyone that reads my journal for whatever reason, but this story is absolutely hilarious and a definite pick-me-up for anyone with a sense of humor that needs a little bit of extra love this week.

Link of the Day:Wall of Protest!

This isn't really a link of the day. This is a link for today, for tomorrow and for yesterday. This is a link that came into being because of the Supreme Court's ruling on abortion last week, and because of North Dakota's new piece of legislation that will make abortion illegal there if Roe vs. Wade is overturned. This is a link that's meant to keep abortion safe and legal for the future.

Wall of Protest.

Go there and submit a photo. Sign it. Spread the news. Post about it on your own journal. Make other people sign.

Visual representation works better than text, and this is going all the way to Capital Hill.

If you want to see what I submitted, here. I set up the shot just so that I could have something to submit that looked good and showed that I'd made an effort. Anything upto 4MB is accepted so don't worry about resizing whatever you want to give in.

Anime Boston news will come soon, I promise. It's just that this is more important.

Link of the Day: Is America Ready For A Woman President?

Finally, someone speaks about exactly how stupid a question that is, and even backs it up with statistics about which countries have already had female presidents or prime ministers. Read her article.

...Or watch me froth like fresh-whipped milk.

Sri Lanka's already had a female president. And guess what she did? Nearly turned Sri Lanka into a police state, complete with the right to detain people with trial if they were thought to be members of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization in Sri Lanka that we've been having a civil war with for decades.

Not exactly the fluff-and-cookies that everyone keeps thinking that will happen if a *gasp* woman gets elected.

Women can make bad leaders.

Men can make bad leaders.

No gender has a monopoly on being reactionary idiots and I really don't get why people are acting like Hilary's going to paint the White House pink if she gets in.

If you don't want to vote for Hilary, that's fine. Your vote, your choice, and I respect that. But I don't want you to be thinking 'Is America Ready For A Woman President?' America doesn't need to put out the good plates or tidy up the house. America is not a frat boy trying to get laid by the President, debating if the house is clean enough to invite her over. In fact, if anything, the President should be someone that you trust to clean up the house for you and I don't mean that in the sense of women should be doing domestic work or that you should vote for Hilary because she's got the magical double-X that'll let her tidy up Bush's mess. What I mean is that you don't pick whom you think America is 'ready' for. You pick whom you think will do the best job of running the country.

Would I like a female president of the USA? Sure! I'd love it.

But do you know what I want more? A president that's pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-UN, pro-women's rights -- a president who can handle international affairs without making America look like the country of idiots, and a president that I'll be proud to say that I voted for. I want a president that's intelligent and diplomatic, who'll remind me that it's possible to be interested in politics without cringing everytime you read an article on what 'your' country is doing.

I want a president who'll make me proud to be American again.

And you know what? If it turns out that Hilary fills all of those wishes, fantastic. If it turns out she fills more of those than the other candidates, still fantastic. Both those situations mean that she'll get my vote, because -- and here's the kicker -- she'll be giving me what I want, because the changes she could theoretically make would last well beyond the four years that she's in the White House. Vote a women for President just because you want a woman in the White House? Fine, but at the most, that'll last for four years -- or possibly eight, if she gets re-elected. Vote someone into the White House because they agree with your stances? You might just get the type of social change that lasts.

Policies matter more than gender, race or favorite flavor of jam. That's why it's called politics, not gendertics, racetics or jamtics.

This isn't a question of what America is 'ready' for; this is about what America needs.

Link of the Day: DM of the Rings.

I've linked you to the latest comic, but I suggest going to the archive page and reading from the first one. XD The basic premise is what happens if you take a bunch of geeks who have never heard of Lord of the Rings and make them play D&D, LotR style. Instead of artwork, there are screencaps from the movies used with little text bubbles -- great way to get a dose of eye candy liberally

Best strip, in my opinion, would have to be this one. Legolas just looks so pleased with himself!

Also, this comic totally reminded me of how hot Aragon is. Now I want to go watch LotR even though I hate it just for the pretty eye candy. Though I still refuse on principle to ever watch the third part.

Link of the Day: Shiny Shiny!

I think I'm just a little in love. Shiny Shiny is a collective blog run by a bunch of girls who report in on the latest gadgest and tech geek love objects. They tend to squee just a little too often over pink things for my liking but some of the plush webcams, iPod skins and computers? Adorable. Perfect site for visiting if you're shopping for the geek girl in your life. XD Or just have time to doing the online equivalent of windowshopping.

On a me-note, my flight leaves at 5:30 tomorrow, so I'll be out of the house and offline by Friday noon. If I can't make it online during Xmas, a friend promised to post all the Xmas fics to only_fiction, my fic comm. And Merry Xmas/holiday of choice to all of you in advance, feel free to use this post to link me to anything you think I need to see when I get back on the 3rd Jan.

Edit: Revolutionary new eyelash curler? No offense, but I wouldn't go anywhere near that thing. How do you even use it?! And Savior thinks current eyelashe curlers are weird. Of course, the LED nose ring is pretty weird as well.

Wine in a can looks rather nifty though, and I say that as a non-drinker, and the Walkie Bits are just plain adorable, even though they're the kind of thing that I'd lose within a week. Meanwhile, the floating duck mouse would make the perfect gift for Kathy if I could order things online (the fact that I can't is why my paid account is going to expire soon, blah).

Edit II: ...What the hell, a ring that has pepper spray built into it?! Okay. Maybe I should stop browsing the site and get back to work on packing and cleaning up the room.

Link of the Day: Light To Unite.

For every virtual candle lit, Bristol-Myers Squibb is donating $1 to the National AIDS fund. It only takes a few seconds and it'll clear your conscience. Go click.