The state is your friend, best friend, and only friend. You don’t need anything else. If you have someone calling themselves your friend, we’ll take care of it for you.

That’s statism and totalitarianism philosophy for you. Total Control means… Total Control, in case people thought otherwise.

 ”A romance with a nocturnal creature that wants to to do to our heroine what Obama does to puppies just doesn’t work for me. ”

you should read Monster Hunter International then. It’s a notable answer to the whole Twilight thing. http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Hunter-International-Larry-Correia/dp/1439132852

I am relatively pleased by America’s spontaneous reaction to Obama and eating puppies. No Republican has of yet called it a “personal attack” that “we’re too good for” and that we shouldn’t “demonize Obama”. That I know of. No Republican that hadn’t voted for Obama in 2008, at least.

 In Japan, social bonds are formed very strongly. Because Japan is often about hierarchy, loyalty, and obedience, many people find value and happiness in having a social circle where they can drop the formality and do all the things they are not allowed to do in the presence of their bosses. Americans are like that too, but we’re always informal, thus we do not often see the value as much as others who live in a monolithic or state controlled environment.

 An idea I got from Japanese deliquent culture is to host a tournament where the best fighters of a school are paired with the best students at academic tests. This alliance will essentially destroy any rebels or bullies, simply by brute force or intel. The best fighter is declared by having everyone fight in a free for all and whoever is left standing is the best of the school.

shirleyelizabeth:  Pregnant in a hot climate?  Wow!  I’m such a wuss about the heat.  Anything that keeps you happy is good, although it’s hard to stay happy with a plot that requires too much suspension of disbelief.

Sadie:  Wonderful you for catching the disconnect between those life pleasures made possible thanks to individual initiative.  I don’t think those pleasures exist(ed) for any but the high party officials in East Germany, the USSR, Cuba, North Korea, etc.

Mike:  I wish you’d warned me before I started reading your comment.  I was lovingly sipping my tea when I read it, with the end result being that I had to clean off both the screen and the keyboard when I laughed so hard I sprayed said tea all over my desk.

Ymarsakar:  I assume you read that in England, schools are contemplating outlawing friendships.  (More accurately, if I remember correctly, they’re going to prohibit “best friends”.)

Kali:  I occasionally read science fiction or fantasy.  I read them a lot in high school and college and then, somehow, just lost interest.  What I really dislike is the whole vampire/werewolf genre that’s so popular now.  A romance with a nocturnal creature that wants to to do to our heroine what Obama does to puppies just doesn’t work for me. 

Two strikes, Ms. Mitchell. You obviously don’t understand how to keep faith with your readers.

Book, do you read science fiction or fantasy?

They also voluntarily agreed to end communism because people were starving and colonies like Jamestown  disappeared off the map because of it.

 Japanese visual novels often have several love stories and interests in them. The childhood friend is a particularly popular venue, since many Japanese don’t move, but live in the same community, rural or urban, for their entire lives. Even if the parents “move” somewhere else for work, often times the “kids” stay at home and as soon as they start high school, they can live by themselves. It’s the Japanese way of fostering “independence”. Whereas in America, kids don’t go live by themselves until college…

 I think their take on childhood friends and love interests are really good. G Senjou No Maou is a good example. I can’t even describe it.

On the other hand, I heard that Hillary Rosen, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotemayor absolutely *loved* the book! They got together every night for three weeks, and read chapters out loud to each other while sipping Cosmopolitans.  There were lots of understanding sighs, heads nodding in agreement, and murmurs of “Truth”.  Sonia at one point even said, “Word!”, but the other two looked at her strangely, not understanding, and she didn’t repeat that one.  When they got to the “capitalism is evil” part, the murmurs escalated into shouts and lots of energetic fist-pumping.

I hear that in the sequel, Claire and Adrien are appointed co-ambassadors and go to the U.N.  One day they get to vote for four, maybe five resolutions condemning Israel, and that got them so hot that they snuck out of the U.N. while it was still in session, took a taxi to a Jewish cemetery where they passionately kissed while spraying graffiti and tipping over headstones, then ran back to their hotel room for a night of frenzied lovemaking.

….capitalism is cruel and evil.

In my Rocky Balboa voice: YO, Adrien- you’re full of it!