I am Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout...

This page is an interesting read: The Forbidden Library

Some of my favorites:

Clan of the Cave Bear. Jean Auel. Coronet. Challenged at the Berrien Springs, Mich. High School for its use in classrooms and libraries (1988), Banned from the Cascade Middle School library in Eugene, Oreg. (1992), Challenged, but retained on the Moorpark High School recommended reading list in Simi Valley, Calif. (1993), despite objections that it contains "hardcore graphic sexual content." (Purchase)

In junior high we all knew what page to turn to for the good stuff.


Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank. Modern Library. Challenged in Wise County, Va. (1982) due to "sexually offensive" passages. Four members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee (1983) called for the rejection of this book because it is a "real downer." (Purchase)

I have noticed that most of the holocaust stories are real downers. Didn’t anyone write a diary where they just had fun with it?


A Light in the Attic. Shel Silverstein. Harper. Challenged at the Cunningham Elementary School in Beloit, Wis. (1985) because the book "enourages children to break dishes so they won't have to dry them." Removed from Minot, N.Dak. Public School libraries when the superintendent found "suggestive illustrations." Challenged at the Big Bend Elementary School library in Mukwonago, Wis. (1986) because some of Silverstein's poems "glorified Satan, suicide and cannibalism, and also encouraged children to be disobedient." (Purchase)
Where the Sidewalk Ends. Shel Silverstein. Harper. Challenged at the West Allis-West Milwaukee, Wis. school libraries (1986) because the book "suggests drug use, the occult, suicide, death, violence, disrespect for truth, disrespect for legitimate authority, rebellion against parents." Challenged at the Central Columbia School District in Bloomsburg, Pa. (1993) because a poem titled "Dreadful" talks about how "someone ate the baby." On the other hand, this book does present the negative consequences of not taking the garbage out. (Purchase)

This just makes me want to go read all of my Shel Silverstein books again. And then take some drugs, break some dishes and lie to my parents about that wild weekend where I worshiped Satan and got a tattoo of Ricardo Montalban on my shoulder.

Dear Santa...

All I want for Christmas is my own revolving drum corp. Awesome.

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YAY!!!!! 4 1/2 day weekend!!!!!!! Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!

Robin Sparkles rocks...

"How I Met Your Mother"'s Robin has a dirty little secret.

It's catchy, though.

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So now I can't blame my father anymore?...

Last night my mother and I were chitchatting about before I was born. My mother apparently wanted a boy because she thought my brother was the bees knees and figured a girl would be harder to raise. She says that she worried the whole time she was pregnant with me that, if I were a girl, I would get my heart broken and possibly worse by men. Fast forward about 36 years and I'm single and have absolutely no interest in dating. So I'm thinking maybe my mother imprinted her worries into my little fetus brain causing me to avoid relationships for fear of getting my heart broken and possibly worse. That's heavy, man. Heavy and deep.

On a completely unrelated note: I can't get the song "SexyBack" out of my head and it's really sort of driving me insane.

Stuff of no importance...

This website is awesome. I now have a big crush on Bob Hope. Alas, I was born about fifty years too late to do anything about it.



I love "Brothers and Sisters". I hope Justin doesn’t have to go back to war. Hopefully Calista can use her wiles on Rob Lowe to get him out of it. I realized last night that I only know two of the characters' names on that show. I just call everyone else by their actors' names. Except for the gay one and his cute boyfriend. I don’t know the actors' names so I call them the gay one and his cute boyfriend. I really need to make more of an effort to learn all the characters' names.



After much thought I’ve decided that I would like to have Hiro’s power to bend space and time a smidge more than Charlie’s power of amazing memory. Profit’s power of flight is pretty cool but sort of limited. The cheerleader’s power seems like it’s just asking for trouble. Same with the hearing of people’s thoughts. I certainly don’t want to be radioactive or have a crazy, murderous altar-ego. Those seem more like curses than super-powers. And the future painting dude has the whole heroin issue that doesn’t seem too appealing. Walking through walls wouldn’t be that fun after the first couple of times. Controlling technology might be ok but it’s certainly not better than stopping time. Hiro totally lucked out with that one.

Random work tip...

If you’re training on a new job and you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t throw away pages of the training notes that you consider unimportant. If they were unimportant then the person compiling the notes probably wouldn’t have included them. Finding out that you threw them away might make the person trying to help with your training very, very annoyed with you.

The Office brings the sexy back...

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Everybody back in the pool...

No jury duty. I called last night and they said that if my badge number fell in between these two numbers I had to be at the courthouse at 8am. If not, then I would just be put back in the jury pool and receive another summons later. My number was way higher than the ones they called. I sort of feel like I dodged the draft except...you know...no one would have shot at me if I had to go to jury duty. I hope no one would have shot at me, at least.

I love the movie 12 Angry Men....

I may or may not have jury duty next week. I’ll find out on Monday night at six if I have to go in the next day. I don’t really know how I feel about it. First I got pretty upset because my company doesn’t pay for jury duty and I only have five days of vacation time which is supposed to last until next August. I imagined this scenario where I was chosen for some three month sequestered mob trial and I’d have to file bankruptcy because I couldn’t pay my bills and I’d get evicted and end up living in one of those scary little motels behind the MGM Grand. Or that I was picked for a case and all the other jurors hated me and I had to spend all day locked in a room getting bullied by them until I cried. Or that the judge would ask me all these incredibly personal questions and I’d have to answer in front of everybody or he would find me in contempt of court and I’d have to go to jail. So then I started getting really angry about how unfair it was that I was being forced to give up my vacation time and getting yelled at and going to jail and maybe having to move into a scary little motel behind the MGM Grand when all I was doing was trying to fulfill my civic duty. I mean, really! How dare the government treat me this way!

Once I stopped making up horrible jury scenarios, though, I started to get a little excited about it. Or, if not excited, then at least interested. I’ve never been to the courthouse before so it might be kind of fun to see how everything looks and works. I used Google blog search to look up other people’s jury experiences and, other than a couple of clearly deranged people, everyone seemed to get through the process without anything too horrible happening to them.

Google blog search is pretty fun, by the way. I’m going to have to use it more often.