California library is using dogs to find hidden bed bugs.

Lover of bites and books.

Who knew bed bugs were such fans of literature? You always figure they're just traveling around hotels, when in reality they're lovers of the literary scene.

The Buena Vista Branch Library in Burbank, CA, has taken to using trained dogs to sniff out hidden bed bugs in its building. The apparent infestation has been going on longer than officials care to admit, so they've taken to using dogs to sniff out the visitors.

"[The department of public works has] tried various techniques, various kinds of sprays and deep cleans, but they're just really hard to get rid of because they could be hiding in books, the carpet or in the [seat] cushions," library services director Elizabeth Goldman told the Los Angeles Times.

"That branch is extremely busy, so there's always warm, welcoming hosts for the bugs sitting in all the chairs," Goldman continued.

Warm, welcoming host. You've probably never been called that while entertaining friends for dinner, but you can now be called it as a bed bug's dream date.

"All was well for about six months, but then, in May, a patron who was sitting in one of our comfy brown chairs had a very strong reaction to some bug bites," Goldman said.

Goldman needs to get into used car sales, because she's somehow selling the appeal of the library despite--you know--bed bugs. Case in point? A "strong reaction to some bug bites" is usually not how one defines a "comfy chair."

In the meantime, the dogs continue their search.

California's university system is doing away with math and English placement exams for incoming freshman.

But is it for honorable reasons, or just to maintain having bodies in school?

According to the Los Angeles Times, every year 25,000 incoming freshman to the California university system take a remedial math or English class. These courses are required after a placement exam suggested the student wasn't prepared enough in high school and isn't ready for a college-level workload. As one might imagine, this means 25,000 students aren't thrilled.

In a turn of events, Cal State's chancellor, Timothy P. White, issued an executive order to the 23 campus presidents that from now on incoming students should be judged on high school grades, SAT and ACT scores, and "previous classroom performance." After all, vague "performance" clauses are always a highlight of any directive.

The motivation--says White, campus presidents, and various officials--is that currently only 19% of students graduate from one of their colleges within four years. Likewise, many students required to take a remedial class (which costs tuition and fees, even if it doesn't count) tend to drop out of school altogether, as they feel alienated from the rest of the college environment. If that sounds dire all-around, it is.

Officials say one motivation behind eliminating placement exams is they want to lessen the financial burden on students for taking a remedial class. Sounds noble! Strangely, though, these same officials ignore the financial tsunami these students take on if they finish a degree. It doesn't take an economist to suggest four years of tuition costs more than one remedial class. Sounds not-so-noble!

Colleges and universities are the non-profit equivalents of Fortune 500 companies wearing humble rags for clothing. If the vast majority of 25,000 students drop out of school because of alienation and annoyance, that's a loss of revenue. But making the road a little easier so the students remain for four years? A consistent revenue stream is born.

Honorable or not, someone loses regardless.

How badly do you want to go to college? If you were accepted to UC Irvine, hopefully not too much.

Every year most colleges and universities accept hundreds--if not thousands--of extra students for their incoming freshman class. They do this because high school students usually are accepted to a variety of institutions, with many choosing to attend elsewhere.

UC Irvine had a bit of a snag with this approach, though, except they won't admit it. Recently, the university sent out notices to 499 accepted incoming students that their offer of admittance was rescinded. Why? According to the Los Angeles Times, the school claims it was for lacking duplicate transcripts or poor grades during the student's senior year of high school.

Ashley Gonzalez, one of the 499 affected students, was told her transcripts were never sent. The same story occurred to Emily Roche, another rejected student. Roche's high school's registrar verified they sent the transcripts on June 20th and blames UC Irvine for over-admitting students. As the Times goes on to explain:

"Overall, about 7,100 of the 31,103 freshmen offered admission to UC Irvine for this fall accepted it as of May, according to the UC Office of the President. That amounts to 850 more students than UC Irvine’s planned freshman class of 6,250, though some are expected to decide to enroll elsewhere this fall in what is known as “summer melt.” Still, in the last two years, the summer drop-off has been only about 250 students."

There's the rub. UC Irvine seems to be making things up as they go because they have nowhere to put the extra students. If 250 students typically "drop-off" in the summer and UC Irvine magically rescinds the offer to nearly 500 extra students, we get awfully close to the desired 6,250 number.

Meanwhile, these students can no longer apply to other schools, considering the late date. Lest you think this is overblown, UCLA rescinded their admittance offers to seven incoming freshman, while UC San Diego rescinded nine.

In essence, UC Irvine is guilty of the same practice as United Airlines was with overbooking flights. The only difference is the school hasn't bloodied their students and dragged them.

Not yet, at least.

La Casa Blanca es un desastre!

Not quite la casa blanca I'm looking for.

The official website of the White House, henceforth known as la Casa Blanca on this humble page, has long allowed a translation from the English language into Spanish. This might be because over 41 million Americans are native Spanish speakers, with an additional 11.6 million native English speakers also fluent in the romance language.

The 52.6 million fluent speakers of Spanish in the United States is more than the number of people who live in Spain. Only Mexico has more.

Alas, in the last week, the official Casa Blanca website has stopped allowing a Spanish translation for no apparent reason other than it's not English. President Donald Trump even once said during a primary debate his preference. "This is a country where we speak English," Trump said. Except, you know, for where the country speaks Spanish. (Don't let anyone know highway signs in Vermont sometimes show kilometers! Quebec's influence has run amok!)

When initially asked about it, Casa Blanca spokesperson Sean Spicer said the website was in flux. "We are continuing to build out the website," Spicer said. "We've got the IT folks working overtime on that now." Naturally, a complete removal of Spanish makes sense. Those verbs are so complex!

A few days later, la  Casa Blanca claimed they were going to bring back a translation eventually. "We're just building up," said Helen Aguirre Ferre, director of media affairs, while still emphasizing the need to build an established website over two decades old. "It's just day two on the job," she said earlier in the week.

Now, as of day nine on the job, nothing still has changed.

Spanish is still banished at la Casa Blanca.

There was no poem read at today's presidential inauguration.

John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have all had poets read at their inaugural ceremonies, showcasing the likes of Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and Richard Blanco.

Indeed, poets have only appeared in modern times at Democrat inaugurations, without a single Republican presidential request occurring in that period. No Nixon, no Reagan, and neither Bush, too.

The Atlantic makes note of this political disparity, and how Donald Trump continued the tradition of eschewing a poet at a Republican inauguration today. Why? Probably because he intends to kill funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. That has a way of putting a sour taste in most poets' mouths.

So, let's travel back to when poets were welcome at inaugurations.

First is an 86-year old Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's 1961 ceremony.

Frost was to read 'Dedication,' an original poem he wrote for the festivities. The elderly poet struggled in the bright January sunshine to read the newly written words, though. The typewriter at the hotel he was staying at in Washington, DC, ran out of ink the night before, and the words were faded on the page. Richard Nixon, of all people, is the gentleman who arrives with a top hat to try and aid Frost:





After a few starts and stops, Frost recited his old classic 'The Gift Outright' from memory instead.

Footage of that moment from the inauguration is nonexistent, though, lost to time and the memory of those in attendance. As a result, here's Frost reciting the same poem years earlier:





Fast forward over thirty years, and we come to the 1993 inauguration of Bill Clinton, who asked Maya Angelou to read one of her poems. She chose 'On the Pulse of Morning'--which she told the Los Angeles Times had meaning for such an event.

"I suggest that we should herald the differences, because the differences make us interesting, and also enrich and make us stronger. The differences are minuscule compared to the similarities. That's what I mean to say,"





Presidents will come and go.

But poems will always remain.

Los Angeles Times critic asks if Shakespeare and Cervantes ever sort of had a connection.

"What would Cervantes do..."

Later this week is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, which means all the crazy lovely little anecdotes and what the--? cute side stories are burrowing out of the woodwork to commemorate the Bard's life and work.

Cases in point:

NPR talks about Shakespeare's love of scenes based around large meals--mainly because people die shortly thereafter in his dramas. It's like your family's Thanksgiving if everyone gave in to the simmering turmoil over grandma burning the candied yams again.

The Guardian looks at "Bed tricks and broken women: Shakespeare's guide to love," in case you thought the glory days of romance involved bathing once a month.

And the Los Angeles Times resorts to daydreaming that Shakespeare is somehow connected to Cervantes.

It's true. Cervantes died 400-years ago this year as well. In fact, it was 400-years ago this week, too (although by different calendars--Julian vs. Gregorian--just play along). But the Spanish Cervantes and the English Shakespeare almost assuredly never met, one of the greatest shames in literary history. The closest connection ever posited is that an elderly Shakespeare adapted an early partially-translated segment of Cervante's Don Quixote and named the second rate play The History of Cardenio. And even that's a stretch connection.

That's it. That's the only relation between two of history's greatest writers who died nearly the same time, separated by a relatively small gulf of water.

And it's probably the only time Shakespeare's attempt at a similar work paled in comparison to another.

NaNoWriMo results: 42,008 people completed a novel.

Which means roughly 42,000 rejection notices from publishing houses are about to be mailed.

The Los Angeles Times reports that approximately 13% of the more than 310,000 participating in National Novel Writing Month crossed the finish line, which equates to writing 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.

Not all completed novels written during NaNoWriMo are doomed to rejection. Noted books like Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants and Erin Morgenster's The Night Circus both originated during previous NaNoWriMos.

So, hey, let's hang out hats on that.

My precious, my precious! New Zealand releases Hobbit-themed currency, continues to blur line between New Zealanders and Hobbits.

As if people weren't pretty certain Bilbo Baggins was from Aukland already...

The New Zealand Post--the country's government-owned creator of currency and stamps--has developed a line of Hobbit-themed money and stamps in advance of the release of The Hobbit in theaters. Picture the American $1 bill paying homage to Star Wars with Chewbacca smiling at you instead of George Washington.

Stamps are nothing new. Money is though. While the New Zealand Hobbit currency is a little too precious to spend for dinner and a movie ($1 coins retail for $29.90 [NZ], and $10 coins are made out of pure gold, valued at $3,695 [NZ]), they are legal tender, for all debts public and private. And while most characters get some love in stamp or monetary form, the focus is heavy on Bilbo.

Gollum? Apparently a greedy monster cuts too close to home for governmental officials. He's given a stamp, but not a coin. Nor a ring for that matter.

The bounty on Salman Rushdie just went up by $500,000.

Salman Rushdie has had a bounty placed on his head since 1989, when the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeni issued a fatwa ordering Rushdie killed for a blasphemous interpretation of the prophet Muhammad.

Time passed. The Ayatollah died of old age, people moved on, and the fatwa sort of existed in a form of non-existence. Only the man who issued the fatwa can remove the fatwa, and with the Ayatollah long dead, ehhh...looks like that fatwa's going to remain for awhile, even if it's not pursued.

One Iranian, Hassan Sanei--who leads a religious organization, and inspired by uprisings sweeping the Middle East--is seeking to change this lethargy surrounding the fatwa on Rushdie. Senai has added $500,000 to the tally on Rushdie's head. This extra $500,000 brings the total bounty on Rushdie to $3.3 million.

Rushdie's response? "I'm not inclined to magnify this ugly bit of headline grabbing by paying it much attention," he told the Los Angeles Times, paying attention to the ugly bit of headline grabbing and magnifying it.



photo: Francine Orr, Los Angeles Times