" Was this a parody, as in the link golddust posted, is MC the voice of a generation ? " I honestly don't think that much thought went into it. I think it makes more sense that miley is trying to shed her good girl image just like britney and christina A did. from the link:" The thing is, Miley failed so spectacularly that it's almost easier to believe she screwed it up on purpose than to accept that she really thought she was being hot." she does the same things in her music videos, the tongue forever hanging out, the leotards, the hip hop gestures etc all designed to be cool and sexy. she wants to be perceived as a bad girl If MC wanted to save her image then she would tell everyone it was a parody, but that's not coming from her, it's coming from another source that hopes this is a parody. But, that don't make it so..... This post was edited by trancegemini_wa on Thu, Aug 29, 13 at 8:17

Rosefolly - What a surprise to find someone here whose father invented the very thing we're talking about! Since I didn't touch the epoxy (wore new workmen's cotton gloves), that isn't what caused my skin to react. It was on my face only. The lumps were below the skin surface. But, it was combined w/ paint; so the mix is maybe what did it? After the anti-biotics, my skin was as smooth as glass. And the project? A great success. I'd painted the porcelain wall tiles, tub, sink, toilet in my new apartment. Not only did it look custom-made, but it shone as if all new. Even scrubbing w/ scouring powder didn't mar the finish -- that's why epoxy is needed in the paint. People asked me if I'd had the bathroom remodeled...a neighbor saw it, did his w/ epoxy paint, too. In spite of my little debaucle w/it , I recommended it to everyone. Sarah Canary - Maybe one reason "Smilla's Sense of Snow" appeals to us so much is because we're both January babies? ... As to the characters -- I'm not having any problems keeping them straight in my mind. Could be because they have such different first and last names...makes it easier. Yes, I agree, the atmosphere is a big part of this story -- really sets the mood.

georgia peach, Thank you SO much for the link! By the way, how did you find this? I'd thought I'd Googled and Lex/Nexed every keyword combination possible. alicia7b, I know what you mean, but my class is coming to the conclusion that book awards actually do mean quite a lot; they just may not mean what we assume they are supposed to mean. Along with reading fiction, we're also reading articles about how major awards are run. And one of the most interesting twists came last week. While most of us felt that the judges were of primary importance (who they were and how they approached their job), how books get submitted to these awards turns out to be equally (if not more) significant. In the article I've linked below, the author tells us that most awards only allow books to be submitted by publishers, and they are usually only allowed two or three submissions. If you're a new author with Philip Roth's publishers and Roth's new book came out the same year your's did, that's one space gone, one less chance for you. Big name publishers can throw more money into promoting your book, but there's less chance of a new author being submitted for an award. Here is a link that might be useful: Making the Initial Cut

Rockybird, you had some childhood adventures didn't you?!? One of my sisters was always a wanderer as a child; back in the '60s parenting was definitely more free-range so she used to go all over our neighborhood unsupervised, which at the time was a relatively new development with lots of fields, woods etc. We lived in a military town which also meant lots of men around and I remember her at one point coming home to tell our mom that someone she met out in the woods was 'bothering' her. That turned out to be a guy who had been exposing himself to my 8-year old sister, repeatedly! OMG, I still recall how shocked and upset my mother was about that. She had no idea what had been happening and evidently my sister just wasn't fazed by the whole thing. Looking back as an adult myself she and my family are extremely fortunate nothing worse happened. Tish, nothing as serious as your story but here's another Bad Mother memory from my files: both my husband and I are/were not terribly interested in food and eating. We are both eat-to-live types and for a long time our dinners were relatively informal to say the least. Till one night when my daughter was ~7 YO she came to me just before bedtime insisting she was so, so hungry. I couldn't understand why until I asked my husband what he had fed her because I thought he'd taken care of that. He looked at me blankly, then asked what *I* had given her because he thought I'd done something for dinner! Talk about feeling awful...that was the start of my many year 5-night a week family dinner schedule (the other 2 nights were leftover and pizza nights). I never missed feeding the kids dinner again :). And while I'm here, one from parenting my son, teenage category. He, at my insistence, went to the senior prom. He wasn't dating anyone so took a girl who was a friend and he also told me the next day offhandedly that he had driven a group of kids home from the prom which was held on South Beach. A few days later I had gotten annoyed at something he hadn't done, homework I think, and was ripping him about being irresponsible, not doing what he should etc. He lost his temper and blurted out that 'driven a group' meant that all the kids he drove home were blind drunk and he was worried they would get hurt so volunteered to get them home safely which meant he had to drive literally to the south end of our county from the north end (SoBe) taking various people to their houses. Not only that, his 'date' ended up drunk-dialing her ex boyfriend to try to hook up with him while my son was taking her home then proceeded to vomit out the window of the car all the way to her house. I'll never forget my son saying to me 'mom, you have no idea what I had to do because I was the only one who wasn't blasted out of my mind!'. Talk about feeling like the world's worst mother!