I still feel like I've forgotten something

[cleolinda]

Linkspam: The OH SHIT Edition, in which I suddenly realize there are a ton of things I was supposed to mention and, inexplicably, didn't.

made_of_fail_pc does, in fact, have a new episode up.

greyduck's new photo comic Quacked Panes (the secret life of rubber duckies, if you will).

The Sirens conference (sirenscon, October 1-4, 2009, Vail, Colorado):

Inspired by the daring adventures of women characters and compelled by the brilliant works of women authors, Sirens is a conference dedicated to women in fantasy literature. The conference, both scholarly examination and professional retreat, welcomes academics, authors, professionals, and readers to attend—and provide varying perspectives on fantasy books by women, female characters in fantasy works, the market for fantasy by and about women, and how to support women in fantasy literature.

Our Guests of Honor in 2009, our inaugural year, include authors Tamora Pierce, Sherwood Smith, and Kristin Cashore, each of whom has written of strong, smart women warriors. In addition, all attendees are encouraged to propose presentation topics related to women in fantasy: history, social studies, fan studies, business, specific books and series, fantasy generally, or even Sirens's 2009 focus on warrior characters and the women who write them.

The thing is, and I feel awful about this, the due date for proposals is tomorrow. Somehow I got "June 20" stuck in my head and thought I had plenty of time to mention it, because I suck. So if you do have something you think would work, do think about submitting that. I don't know that I'll be able to go, but I would love to and will if I can (depending on health and finances), so if nothing else, keep it in mind if you think you'd be interested in attending.

(Additional details: registration is currently $175 [all programming, events, keynotes and keynote food]; hotel is $109 for 1/2, $134 for 3-4. Adds praetorianguard, "Hotel is the Vail Cascade Resort and Spa. Think library, awesome bar, hot ski bum staff.")

From quizzicalsphinx: "Since you're an Alabama girl too, I wondered if you might link people to the Calhoun County Animal Shelter's Donation Page. Due to the economy, they've had steadily declining donations and two weeks ago, they lost their gas. I can't confirm this rumour, but word on the street has it that, as of this morning, they lost their electricity and water as well. If the utilities cannot be restored, up to 300 otherwise adoptable animals may have to be euthanised. Here's the local news report."

From sachielle: U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World; Neil Gaiman On The ‘Obscenity’ Of Manga Collector Christopher Handley’s Trial.

Assorted thoughts:

A couple of mail-related things--Lelio? I couldn't figure out what your LJ username was (to contact you), but I did get what you sent me? Also, I brilliantly lost the message (comment? email? PM?) where someone mentioned Rement, but I did get that package as well. The one with The Littlest Shopping Basket?

God, I need an intern.

Lots of jaw/tension headaches. Not sure if it's the weather (air pressure) or not. Or possibly a buildup of massive amounts of fail.

Slept in today, then made necessary purchases at local shopping centers. May go see Up tomorrow.

Yelled at people on eBay who could not hear me for bidding against me on a bargain and thereby making it less of a bargain. Won the auction anyway (it ended at only $18, I am not nickel-and-diming myself to death, stop saying that). You will find out what it was several weeks from now, I think, although rest assured that it is merely a prop, not a character.

Making a doll-sized longbow? Not as easy as you might think.

Comments

[bishsticks.livejournal.com]

It seriously disturbs me! I could go upstairs and pick out half a dozen manga titles that would get me arrested too, and it's all stuff I got from amazon.com.

[count-01.livejournal.com]

Sure, but would you be dumb enough to plead guilty and take the five years? Because, to be honest, a court that thinks this case is a necessary and righteous prosecution is not one I'd count on to temper justice with mercy.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Sure, but would you be dumb enough to plead guilty and take the five years? Because, to be honest, a court that thinks this case is a necessary and righteous prosecution is not one I'd count on to temper justice with mercy.

First off, the prosecutor is the one who brings the case and thinks it a "necessary and righteous prosecution." But it's the court (i.e. the judge) who gets to decide the sentence. And they don't always agree with each other.

I don't know that I'd call that dumb. I'd call the LAW dumb, and it obviously needs to be either repealed entirely, or modified to apply to actual child porn only. But in the article, the guy's attorney counseled him to take the plea deal to avoid this going to trial. A trial at which an Iowa jury would be shown the most explicit passages from the manga that the prosecution could find. The jury would then be asked questions like "would a reasonable person think this is a picture of a minor having sex?" If the answer is yes, they would be instructed that the law applies in whatever way. Juries don't really have the luxury of saying "yes, but this law is stupid." That's not their job.

It actually sounds like a smart defense attorney, given the circumstances. Neither of the counts have a minimum prison sentence, and if this guy's never been in trouble before and the judge doesn't let the prosecution boss him around, he could get off with a really light sentence, as opposed to going to trial and facing conviction on all four counts and a potentially longer prison sentence. A lot of times, litigation (and criminal prosecution) is about taking the lesser of two evils just to make it go away.

All this said, I think it's utterly ridiculous that this happened in the first place. It's definitely a frightening, slippery-slope type law that should definitely be stopped.

Wow. Sorry to ramble. Taking Legal Assistant hat off now.

[count-01.livejournal.com]

I don't know (of course I understand the process of bringing and answering charges in the criminal courts is quite a bit more complicated than the article made it seem) but I think this is one I might be inclined to fight, even assuming (as I do) that I'd be likely to lose. The law on its face, is severely overbroad, and however the "community standards" fare, surely there are not 12 people (even in Iowa) so gullible that they'd look at a squickily-drawn image of a schoolgirl getting violated six ways from Sunday by a tentacle beast (or whatever his most offensive image of the 200 or so they say were obscene) and say, "Yep. That is definitely a depiction of a real act violating a real schoolchild. We should lock that dude away for the protection of society."

Okay, I suppose it's entirely possible there are 12 such gullible people in all of Iowa, but it's less likely they are all from the same county, and got called to jury duty the same week.

Corollary: given this is a kiddie-porn statute, does he get branded a sex offender for life? If so, damn, I know I'd want to fight, and try and (somehow) pay for an appeal that we'd be much more likely to win than the trial.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

I really think it comes down to a "lesser of two evils" thing, as I said. I work in civil litigation and not criminal, and I know the rules are different, but I can see this being a thing where the attorney told him "look, you can either take this plea deal and do five to ten years at the most, or we can fight this and if you lose you're doing closer to forty years." Which would be just about the rest of this guy's life. Principle of the thing aside, I think if you're in the thick of this kind of situation you'd definitely give that some thought.

Yeah, I don't know about the sex offender thing. I can see that throwing a whole other line of thinking into the mix.

"Yep. That is definitely a depiction of a real act violating a real schoolchild. We should lock that dude away for the protection of society."

But that's not what they would be deciding. At the most, they would be asked to decide something broad like "does this depict a minor having sex?" And if they say yes, then they will be told what law applies and how. I don't think juries get a lot of "yes, but.."s - as in "yes, but it's obviously cartoony and not applicable." Juries are usually required to just determine the facts. "Did this happen?" They then are told what law applies, based on the facts they determined.

[count-01.livejournal.com]

NOVs aside, juries in criminal trials usually do seem to get a certain amount of "yes, but" leeway.

Of course, if the defendant pleads guilty (as this poor sap, it seems, decided to) it's entirely moot.

Too bad. It would have been a pretty strong appeal, and there were a lot of people willing (eager, even) to help out with it.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Do they? That's cool. Like I said, I work on the civil end of things, so most of the jury instructions I've seen have been more of the "if x then y" variety.

I do agree that it could have been a strong appeal, but at the same time I don't want to judge the guy for the decision he made. I think it's a different perspective when it's happening to you, and your personal future on the line.

[count-01.livejournal.com]

Oh, no question, I don't think he's the bad guy here. Sure, he's guilty, guilty, guilty, but under a law that makes owning quite a lot of material that really isn't evil, criminal. It's just criminal that they'd prosecute him under such a sloppily-written law.

Nor am I screaming, "prosecutorial misconduct!" like in the Rugby Boys' case last(?) year. I'm screaming "legislative overzealousness!" Also, "damn the Man!" Because this law is garbage if it gets someone put behind bars for buying comic books which are perfectly legal in Japan, and perfectly legal to import into the US...but not to own and possess. That is clearly a badly-drawn distinction on its face.

And a lot of the "if x then y" depends on the jury instructions, which of course won't signify since no jury will need to be impaneled for Mr. Handley. If he'd been lucky enough to get "his" instruction read for the jury, then they might have had quite a bit of leeway indeed; if the prosecuting attorneys got their way, it'd almost certainly be a "just the facts, ma'am" scenario presented to them, and the facts are that under this crappy law, he is most certainly a guilty man.

It's just sad that it had to play out at all. "Community standards" for which laws we use to protect our children (which laws we "need" to protect our children) seem to get weaker every time another yahoo burns a flag. We need Brennan back, to rail against his own opinion in Roth, dammit.

[kveran.livejournal.com]

I can't think of anything I own that would get me arrested, but it's the principle of it that bothers me. I mean, the guy is getting his kicks from seeing drawings of characters--not even realistic drawings--go at it. I fail to see how that is harmful to society in any respect whatsoever. Not only does it seem to me that it's a ridiculous waste of time for our justice system (and, again, the government poking its nose into informedly-consensual activities taking place behind closed doors, although that is admittedly a stretch from this case) but it also smacks of censorship, which, as a writer, I rather loathe.

How does having a manga volume with explicit material (and, given that it came from Japan, I'll grant you that it's probably very explicit and I'll hazard a guess that the charge of "bestiality" came from tentacles) harm ANYONE in ANY way at all?