Minnesota Pet Lovers-we need your voice for animals!

Please call your legislators in the next few days.

The “dangerous dog” bills are on the Minnesota House and Senate floors and need your action right away. Please contact your State Representative AND your State Senator and ask them to vote YES on the bills below.

S.F. 2876 authored by Senator Ellen Anderson

H.F. 2906 authored by Representative Michael Paymar

These bills address a real issue relating to dangerous dogs, which is accountability of the people who own the dangerous dog.

H.F. 2906 and S.F. 2876 strengthen existing law by giving animal control authorities the tools they need to better protect the public from dog bites and dog attacks. They address repeat offenders and the culpability of dog owners who endanger the public. They clarify existing language, require the sterilization of dangerous dogs, increase the dollar amount of insurance required (for a victim of a dog attack), provide due process for a dangerous dog designation, provide for prohibiting further dog ownership, and increase penalties for those who create dangerous dogs through irresponsible actions. The maximum penalty is often paid by the dog,
but there are relatively light penalties, if any, placed on the owners.

• Please mention these points when placing your phone call:
  
• Ask them to support dangerous dog bill S.F. 2876 and H.F. 2906
  
• Tell them you do NOT support any amendments that would include a dog breed ban in Minnesota.
  
• The problem is the not the breed of a dog.
  

Call your State Representative to support H.F. 2906
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/hmem.asp

Call your State Senator to support S.F. 2876
http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/members/index.php?ls=85#header

If you don’t know who your legislators are, go to:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/districtfinder.asp

Thank you!

Annual Humane Society Book Sale

The shelter in Woodbury where I work is filled with books as well as animals for the annual Animal Humane Society Book Sale. We're having it at two locations, Woodbury and Golden Valley. The hours are slightly different between the two sales because we had different hours back when they were setting it up. Thursday night is $5 at the door but the rest of the weekend the sale is free. We'll have books, CDs, DVDs, videos and classic vinyl records. It looked liked everything was under $10 and most is priced $1-$5.

Here are the addresses:
Animal Humane Society, 845 Meadow Lane North, Golden Valley and 9785 Hudson Road in Woodbury.

Here are the hours:

Woodbury

Thursday, February 7
5:00 - 8:00 pm

February 8, 9 & 10
Noon - 6 p.m.

Golden Valley:

Thursday, February 7
6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Friday, February 8
11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Saturday, February 9
9:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Sunday, February 10
11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

I'm coming out of my winter cocooning to say that we saw Cloverfield today and really liked it. No spoilers here. We usually wait until someone we know sees a movie or a lot more reviews appear but this time we didn't. Coming out of the theater into the frigid winter evening was not so much fun.

Things that make me feel old: the twentieth anniversary of Joshua Tree. This album accompanied me to Japan for my semester abroad and was my jogging music. At that point in time, in that neighborhood, a white woman jogging attracted a lot of attention. I only saw one other person--a very athletic looking Japanese young man--jogging the whole time I was there. (I needed to jog or I'd have to give up our daily oyatsu office treats.) I'd put my headphones on and it was much easier to ignore all of the staring.

Funny things: A few days ago Alan and I were watching TV and an e-surance ad came on. Alan speculated that there was probably fanfic for the hot main character. Tonight, after working late and with my brain fried, I decided to check it out. I should have known because of Rule 34. Anyway, I found this hilarious: http://kissmesuzy.blogspot.com/2007/04/high-risk-insurancethe-time-is-right.html. It's safe to read through the first few comments, after that read with caution.

Scary things: We saw No Country for Old Men over the holiday and I've found a new scariest bad guy eva! He doesn't have the charm of Ralph Fiennes's Amon Goeth or Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter, but he made me want to scream at the screen each time he started his little game. A friend said he's had nightmares all week after seeing it. Great movie!

Christopher Barzak Day

Today is the release date for Chris's book One for Sorrow! I first met Chris at the 1998 Clarion writing workshop in East Lansing. I very quickly fell in love with his writing--probably from the first thing of his I read. It didn't matter what story he was telling, I just wanted to sit in my inner tube and float down the river of his prose. But Chris's writing is more than just beautiful prose--he is a marvelous story teller. He takes everyday people and, through a fabulist sleight of hand, lands them on the precipice of the extraordinary. Go check out his book right now! You won't regret it. And, if you haven't read any of his short fiction, you can find a list of them (many available online) on his website at: http://christopherbarzak.wordpress.com/news/.


For other people's opinions of Chris, please see Mumpsimus.

Happy birthday to my one and only, Alan!

And a belated one to Mr. Barzak!

We had a really lovely weekend at Diversicon with Dave Schwartz, Mark Rich, Martha Borchardt, and all. Got to see Mark and Martha play as Keg Salad again-they need a MySpace page! Listened to two chapters of guest of honor Andrea Hairston's awesome new hoodoo (vodou?) novel which needs a publisher. Chatted with wonderful people about books, writing and movies and got lots of titles to Netflick. Bought lots of used books-not as many as last year-and a big bag of seventies era F&SFs. (The bid was only $1 for them so I had to up it to $2-little did I know there were many more bags of magazines for the auction.)

Happy birthday, Ms. Bond! Many fabulous returns!