[Probably] No E&GT Tomorrow

First of all, if you’re reading this on the front page, I hope you notice that all of the posts below this one have been shortened and now end with a “Continue Reading” link. It’s our my hope that this will make the homepage a little easier to navigate, as well as searching through our backlogs.

I’m currently writing this from the library, as the renovations in the basement caused a wire to be cut and then spliced back together. What I mean to say is that when I left the house there was no internet, and there may not be when I return.

That being said, this post is to announce the new layout [so far 1/4 of all the posts are formatted this way] and to state that if I don’t get my internet problems fixed by tonight there will be no E&GT.

My post on Friday will go up even if it means returning to the library  to write and post it.

Thanks as always for tuning in. Here’s a gif of a prank from what I assume is some goofy Japanese TV show:

2 Broke Girls, S3E3 “And the Kitty Kitty Spank Spank”: A TV Review

kittyspank

Last week I mentioned how what originally drew me to 2 Broke Girls was its premise, that of two girls down on their luck, doing anything they can to get by. This week I’m faced with the fact that they’ve pretty much thrown it out the window, and that I just may be okay with that.

This isn’t a show that is ever going to be laugh-out-loud funny, at least to me, but this episode made me grin a number of times, and didn’t even mention money once. You don’t have to search much further for criticism about a show “forgetting its purpose” than one hour earlier on CBS. How I Met Your Mother has a very distinct goal, and one they’re finally getting around to in the ninth and final season, and while we complained about how long they were taking we also got more than a few hilarious episodes out of the seasons leading up to what will be the finale. When a premise has been so clearly stated [in the title, no less], can we forgive a show for setting it aside to make us laugh? Continue reading

Shame Day: Save the Pearls

So the other day a friend told me about this new teen fiction series called Save the Pearls by Victoria Foyt. I’ve included the premise of the first book, Revealing Eden, as stated on Amazon below.

The picture featured on the cover of the book

Eden Newman must mate before her 18th birthday in six months or she’ll be left outside to die in a burning world. But who will pick up her mate-option when she’s cursed with white skin and a tragically low mate-rate of 15%? In a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian, underground world where class and beauty are defined by resistance to an overheated environment, Eden’s coloring brands her as a member of the lowest class, a weak and ugly Pearl. If only she can mate with a dark-skinned Coal from the ruling class, she’ll be safe. Just maybe one Coal sees the Real Eden and will be her salvation her co-worker Jamal has begun secretly dating her. But when Eden unwittingly compromises her father’s secret biological experiment, she finds herself in the eye of a storm and thrown into the last area of rainforest, a strange and dangerous land. Eden must fight to save her father, who may be humanity’s last hope, while standing up to a powerful beast-man she believes is her enemy, despite her overwhelming attraction. Eden must change to survive but only if she can redefine her ideas of beauty and of love, along with a little help from her “adopted aunt” Emily Dickinson.


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The Problem With Pietism

I had said before that I’d be taking up the subject of religion again, and as I promised, here’s another segment in my litany of criticisms.

Two down, 93 more to go…

Despite Las Vegas’s image as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it’s actually a relatively quiet town. In fact, ol’ Sin City is cited by a few sources as having the most churches per capita of any city in the US. My family once visited one church (we’ll leave out the full name) called “Grace ———-,” in what was perhaps the single greatest piece of religious sarcasm since Saul was told to go to a street called “straight.”

It’s not very straight…

At “Grace ——-” I had the pleasure of sitting on a butt-numbing pew and listening to an hour of the pastor passionately decry something called “Arminianism.” It was vitally important, it turned out, that we understand that these people were fundamentally wrong regarding predestination. Now I’ll freely admit that I’ve forgotten a lot the the pastor’s exact admonitions- just why it’s so essential to believe one over the other. That was about six or seven years ago- if there’s some awful, soul-rending disaster about to happen to me, I’m still waiting for it.

And that brings us to the topic for the day:

Theological “correctness.” Continue reading

Why Writing Strong Female Characters Is[n’t] Hard

For the past several months I’ve been compiling what different people on the internet have been saying in regards to creating strong female characters, while also observing how others feel about those three words in general.
While not a topic you’d think would necessitate a lot of discussion, the truth is that there’s a lot more to this discussion than “Yes, I like them they’re great and we need to see more of them.”
As a disclaimer I would like state that I let the research in this post come to me. I did not do Google searches for “female writers’ opinions on strong female characters.” All of the quotes and articles below I found organically, if we can use that word to describe my internet browsing habits. Continue reading

Fame Day: Abdul Haji, WWII Vets, and These Other Guys

For everything that’s going on in the world, this actually hasn’t been such a bad week. The tragic murder of an anti-racist singer in Greece has, at long last, resulted in the hammer being brought down on upon the Neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” party responsible for both his death and attacks on leftists, immigrants, and a 12-year-old girl. It’s been a long time coming, but at long last the Greek government is actually heeding calls from the public to respond to this fascist menace; other European countries, ya mind taking a hint?

Speaking of racists, did you know that the rally the Klu Klux Klan was planning on holding at Gettysburg was cancelled as a result of the shut-down of the US government?

Well it was.

If you can’t take joy at the collapse of a racist rally, what can you?

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