Wednesday, April 27, 2011

WNEP: Another Kind of Asshat

I'm taking time out of my normal coverage of Nicky to discuss several women who have Nicky beat for narrow-minded vitriol.

Yesterday, Kena Vernon, a reporter at Pennsylvania TV station WNEP, ran a story about high school teacher Judy Buranich who writes erotic books for Ellora's Cave under the name Judy Mays. (I quit purchasing books from EC some time ago for several reasons including their business practices and their inability to consistently deliver decent prose at a reasonable price; however, that has nothing to do with their authors who should not be tarred with the same brush as EC's owners).

Ms. Buranich had apparently kept her writing life confidential from most students and parents. The gist of the story was how three parents had found out about Ms. Buranich's writing and were upset because OMGWTF it has SEX in it. And she's teaching KIDS!! Oh the controversy. And oh the backlash.

Three women - yes, a whole three - were quoted in the story. The first two women - Wendy Apple and Deanna Stepp - simply come across as narrow-minded asshats who still believe that women can't or shouldn't enjoy, discuss, or write about sex. And yet they have kids. Unless the stork dropped off some babes in diapers, this makes them hypocrites as well.

Ms. Apple is quoted in the article as saying:
"Now my son knows so how is he thinking when he's sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side"
Does this woman also think that pregnant women shouldn't teach because her son might imagine how the teacher got pregnant. Didn't we leave this type of sexist thinking behind sometime in the first half of the last century?

And I've got news for her. Her son is a teenager; sex is pretty much all he's thinking about right now.

Elsewhere, Ms. Apple is claims that people are attacking her on Facebook for speaking out. Yup, this is America, where you have the right to say narrow-minded, sexist bullshit...and people have the right to tell you that you're saying narrow-minded sexist bullshit.


But the stupid stick today really goes to Kelly Hornberger, who says in the video version of the story (emphasis mine):
"Unbelievable. I can't even imagine somebody would write such stuff. I don't read it. I don't watch it. you know...that's just not how I want my children to be brought up. And I don't want my son sitting in her class thinking, "Is she looking at him, you know, a certain way..."
Huh? Because Ms. Buranich writes erotica, she should be suspected as a pedophile? Under what rock does this woman live? This is so disgusting that I don't really have words to discuss my outrage.

And let's not forget Ms Vernon's and WNEP's role in all this. By airing the pedophile implication and by not presenting any balance - or even any fucking common sense - to the claims made by these women, they are in effect endorsing the message in the story. I hope that WNEP has a good lawyer. I hope Ms. Buranich has an even better one.

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A cool Youtube video by someone who professes to be a former student of Ms. Buranich. Go watch it!

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Smart Bitches cover the story
Dear Author covers the story
WNEP's Facebook page is getting hammered
The Support Judy Mays Facebook page has 3719 likes (and it's still increasing)

Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Rusty Nail Has Moved Again

The Rusty Nail has moved again. Once again, someone filed fraudulent and malicious reports with the blog's former host that The Rusty Nail was spam. So now the The Rusty Nail is here.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Upcoming Reviews

I should have a bit of free time over the next couple of weeks, and that means it's time to catch up on outstanding reviews:

Ethereal Gazette Issue 12 - Yes, finally (!!), the completion of reviews for the stories in Issue 12 is almost at hand. There are, I believe, five stories left. I've read all but one of them and have started writing up the review.

Ethereal Gazette Issue 11 - Nicky's backwards way of doing things is a mite confusing, but he has finally produced Issue 11 of the EG. I actually like the cover of this issue because Nicky didn't do it this time; he found a nice - but naive - young lady on Vampirefreaks who provided him with the art work from her DeviantArt account. Unfortunately, Nicky manage to misspell the very difficult-to-spell word "second' on the front cover of the magazine.

This issue contains eight fiction stories - two of which are by Nicky - three public domain stories, and one true-life story (I think). The preview contains some amusing typos, including three different spellings of "portrait". In a lovely deja-vu moment, Nicky has also misspelled Lloyd Phillip Campbell's middle name in the TOC; it's missing the second "i". I'm curious to see what the body of the anthology contains.

A Rural Weird Tale - Nicky's latest "cult exclusive" post in the H.P Lovecraft cult on vampirefreaks.com. I think it's supposed to be non-fiction...


I know that I also have non-Nicky books to review as well and that is coming. Those books are far more enjoyable than those listed above and not so lulz-worthy.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

A Little Fun Diversion



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