{"id":1217,"date":"2006-08-28T05:00:44","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2006-08-27T19:22:47","modified_gmt":"2006-08-28T03:22:47","slug":"sbd-dangerous-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/?p=1217","title":{"rendered":"SBD: Dangerous Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans like to fight over dangerous ideas. Evolution, there’s a good one. God help us if we could have gotten here without God, you know? Democracy is another dangerous idea. See: Lamont vs.<\/em> Lieberman and all the fear-fallout that occurred when the people’s candidate won the primary.<\/p>\n

But this isn’t about politics. This is about another set of dangerous ideas, ideas that go largely unchallenged by the fundamentalists, that permeate our supermarkets, our libraries, our bookstores. Ideas that threaten the family, <\/em>people!<\/p>\n

I’m talking about that most insidious of genres, ROMANCE.<\/p>\n

Here’s what we need plastered over every last romance novel.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

To save your eyesight, the text reads,<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Warning: the Surgeon General has Determined that Romance Novels are Dangerous to Your Mental and Emotional Health, Such As It Is. You’ve Been Warned, Sucker.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Look how attractive and unobtrusive this sticker is.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Ever since I began reading and writing romance, my brain has been churning. I’m seeing things that don’t exist, thinking about people and places in new ways. I’m having a hard time separating warm fantasy from cold reality.<\/p>\n

Science Fiction never did this to me. Philip K. Dick may have been the master of the reality-bending novel, but his books never made me flush, splash cold water on my face, look in the mirror, and think, What the hell just happened?<\/p>\n

I dunno, maybe it’s a guy thing. Maybe the label should read Warning to Men<\/strong>. Maybe women already understand this stuff is fantasy, mind candy, a temporary diversion from life’s bullshit and not the promise of what could be.<\/p>\n

All I know is, I’ve hit the last fifty pages of Jennifer Crusie’s Crazy for You<\/em> and I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to go play World of Warcraft. SheWitch is gonna go to Silithus, take off all her robes, and dance naked among the stonelash scorpids.*<\/p>\n

D.<\/p>\n

*and get killed in, oh, about five seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans like to fight over dangerous ideas. Evolution, there’s a good one. God help us if we could have gotten here without God, you know? Democracy is another dangerous idea. See: Lamont vs. Lieberman and all the fear-fallout that occurred when the people’s candidate won the primary. But this isn’t about politics. This is about… Continue Reading SBD: Dangerous Ideas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-n-authors","category-writers-life","radius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ballsandwalnuts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}