A few years back John Green wrote a book called Looking For Alaska. In that book, he had a quote from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Edna’s family still owns the copyright to her poems, and John’s publisher told him the quote was too long to count as “fair use” so he either had to shorten the quote or pay Edna’s family. He shortened the quote because he didn’t have money.

In real life, that was the end of it. But let’s say that John Green published his book, and several years later Edna St. Vincent Millay’s family got mad and wanted money for the quote, even though he had shortened it. As copyright law works now, John would go to court and argue that his quote was fair use. Edna’s family would argue that they wanted money and the judge would decide whether John owed them money or not.

Here’s how it would go under SOPA: Edna’s family says that John Green violated their copyright. Because of that, they track down every copy of Looking For Alaska, and every copy of An Abundance of Katherines and every copy of Paper Towns and they halt the printing of The Fault In Our Stars and every copy of every book that John Green ever wrote is piled up and burned. And after that, John can take Edna’s family to court, if he has the money for a lawyer now that his livelihood has been destroyed.

Notice how they didn’t go to court until after John’s life was destroyed? Notice how John Green was presumed guilty and punished without trial? Also notice how everything he ever wrote was destroyed, not just the one thing with potential copyright infringement? This is what congress wants to do to the internet. This is why you should be calling your congressperson and telling the president that if it goes through congress, he needs to Veto it. SOPA is unconstitutional and wrong.

Actually, I’m working on 3 different books, but the one I’m furthest along on, and the one I’m enjoying the most is a book written for Americans to explain the things they will find in Great Britain that will annoy, confuse or surprise them. I’m covering basic things like words that are different (like pavement instead of sidewalk), to how the government is structured, to which celebrities the British talk about that the Americans have never heard of. I’m trying to make most of it funny and light, a bit like my British Food web site.

I’m also planning to intersperse my text with famous quotes about Britain, and maybe some original illustrations. I don’t have a publisher. If there are any interested, let me know. If need be, I will self-publish. (The actual publication could still be a few years off, realistically.)

Also, I don’t have a title. If you come up with a title for me and I use it, I’ll make sure you get a free copy and a mention in the “thank you” section. If you can think of anything about the British that annoyed, surprised, delighted, or confused you, feel free to post it in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter or Tumblr. I’ve already done about 160 topics, but there’s always a chance I’ve missed something.

So that’s what I’ve been working on that has kept me from posting here and on my book review tumblr as much as I should. With the help of a netbook I can use while I’m still in bed, and my patron saint of writing, Neil Gaiman, I’m actually properly determined to finish this book and see it in print.

I also took some video when John was speaking. It is a bit crappy because we were sitting way in the back. My husband is 6′5″, so we didn’t want to block anyone’s view.

Also, while we’re on the subject of nerdfighters, my guinea pig Spike is a nerdfighter.

He has a deformed paw in the front (we don’t know how it happened and it doesn’t seem to hurt him), and the toes are separated like a nerdfighter gang sign.

First of all, there are the Tumblr blogs that I mentioned in the last post. I’ve been reviewing books like crazy, and posting random crap. I also did a favor for my cousin. He needed someone to do a little proofreading, so I gave him an hour of my time to nitpick.

The project I was working on was related to Green Routes. If you live in, or plan to visit the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and a little of the surrounding area) you need to check that site. It is full of great information about small businesses that try to operate in an environmentally responsible way. And beyond being “green” a lot of the places just look fun and interesting.

Working on proofreading and copy editing things always makes me feel a little defensive. Like, people think that I think I’m smarter than they are because I know a lot about punctuation and spelling. I think some people get paranoid that I’m judging them whenever they make a typo. The truth is, I’m completely aware that spelling and punctuation have basically nothing to do with intelligence. I have friends who can’t spell to save their lives, but they’d kick my ass on any IQ test any day. I just happen to have a talent for English nit-picking. I like editing because it allows me to help some of those smart people sound as smart as they really are.

People also think that I’m probably one of those grammar nazis that trolls all over the internet pointing out everyone’s typos. I’m not. Why should I give out my services all over the internet for free? I notice typos, and usually don’t mention them. Especially when they are perpetrated by people I like. However, there is one situation in which I will use my superpowers for evil. And that is against internet trolls. I hang out at I’m With Coco quite a bit, and every so often we get some obnoxious Leno fan trolling there. Rather than arguing with them, I just correct their grammar and spelling. So the general rule is that I will only tear your grammar apart if you annoy me, or if you pay me. Which I admit is a little weird. I’m like a grammar dominatrix.

I wanted to give a quick explanation of what the new buttons are. There is the blog button, which you would have pushed to get here. Then there is the Book Review Blog button. That one takes you to my new book review blog over at Tumblr. Then there is the British Food button, which goes to my British Food reviews, as usual. Then I also added a button for my Twitter feed. Cause I use Twitter quite a bit. Then there is the mysterious “GirlAlive Tumblr” button. That is a secondary Tumblr blog that I created, mostly to do some testing and other stuff for the book blog, but then I decided to keep it as a feed somewhere between this blog and my twitter feed. It’s more information than Twitter, but less than here. It’s mostly where I re-blog stuff that I find amusing or whatever. The kind of things I post on Facebook, but I don’t generally want complete strangers friending me on Facebook. So the Tumblr is there instead. Then the last button is my cafepress shop.

I’ve been saying that I want to get out of cafepress for over a year now, but for the moment nothing will happen with that. I can’t get my original image files back from cafepress, and they’re all on my laptop that was stolen last year. At the moment I don’t have any good image software. So it’ll be cafepress for a while more.

Anyway, that’s the new front page. Lots of buttons for stuff. I’d fill you in on everything else I’m doing, but you’d be so bored. I’ve been looking for a job. Turns out there aren’t any. Besides that, I’ve been lurking on YouTube watching the Vlogbrothers and other nerdfighters, and also playing some KOL, since I hadn’t played for something like two years. If you sat and watched how I spend my day, you’d be bored into a coma.

Oh, and for those on Twitter who heard about my eye problem last week, my eyes are fine. I had a weirdness in one eye when I woke up, so I got checked to make sure my retina was still where it should be. It is fine. I just smooshed my eye in my sleep or something.

http://alanaisreading.tumblr.com/

So if you want to read fairly random book reviews and other stuff about authors or reading or whatever, you can go there and follow me if you have a tumblr account. If you don’t have or want a tumblr account, it also automatically posts to Twitter whenever there’s a new post there, so you can follow me on Twitter.

I’m probably not going to generally be mentioning it much from here, so bookmark it now if you care.