Title: I Am the Invisible Kind
Author: Clea Saal
Born: October 8,2021
Genre: Asexuality/Gender Issues
Format: Paperback/Kindle
Page count: 115 pages
ISBN: 979-8487410337
Price: $9.95 (paperback) $7.75 (Kindle eBook)
Gay or straight? Maybe bi? Trans? These are all identities we keep hearing about on a daily basis. They are literally everywhere. We live in a world that seems to be obsessed with sex, gender, and gender identity, so we can’t even take two steps without tripping over half a dozen references to them. Maybe we are just trying to make up for lost time, as it was only a few decades ago that these words were basically taboo, ones we barely dared whisper. My, how have things changed, and for the most part I would say it has been for the better, as we try to f...
Title: Your Dog Is NOT a Primate
Author: Clea Saal
Born: July 22,2021
Genre: Dog care/Dog rescue
Format: Paperback/Kindle
Page count: 124 pages
ISBN: 979-8528059693
Price: $9.95 (paperback) $7.75 (Kindle eBook) (more…)
Title: Neutering Is Forever
Author: Clea Saal
Born: June 8, 2021
Genre: Dog care/personal/controversial (general)
Format: Kindle eBook
AISN: B0936SXJ95
Price: $4.95
1. Signs
‘The only balls your dog needs are the ones he fetches,’ so reads a sign outside a veterinary clinic. I guess they thought it was funny. This story, unfortunately, is anything but. It is the story of my best friend, whose life I basically ruined by listening to a vet who shared that casual attitude towards his physical integrity; a vet who saw dogs as a bunch of bits and pieces that could be taken out at will... who saw dogs as things that were there for humans to play with, and to be modified in any way we saw fit. (more…)
A pandemic, a single mother at the end of her rope, a lonely little girl, and a technological solution that promises to put an end to all their troubles. A virtual companion, an artificial intelligence construct that will always be by her side, one that will keep an eye on her, one that will keep her safe... and safely out of her mother’s hair. (more…)
Title: Get Your Brain Out of Your Pocket!
Author: Clea Saal
Born: March 20,2021
Genre: Essays, technology,non-fiction
Format: Paperback
Page count: 136 pages
ISBN:979-8725518757
Price: $10.95 (paperback) $8.75 (Kindle eBook)
Also available in Spanish!
1. Tales of the Bilingual Generation (more…)
Título: Cuando las palabras estorban/Inglés para internautas
Autor: Clea Saal
Tema: estudio de los idiomas
Idioma: español
Formato: tapa blanda
Publicado: 25 de enero de 2021
Páginas: 207
ISBN: 979-8700087896
Precio: $11.95
Nota: si el idioma que quieres aprender NO es el inglés el primero de los dos títulos que constituyen este libro está disponible como libro electrónico aquí (y si el idioma que te interesa es el inglés de todos modos te aviso que en este enlace puedes encontrar el primer capítulo del otro tomo).
(more…)
Title: When Words Get in the Way, How NOT to Fail at Learning a Foreign Language
Author: Clea Saal
Born: January 26, 2021
Genre: Non-fiction/Language Learning (general)
Format: Kindle eBook
AISN: B08V13WPT5
Price: $4.95
1. When Words Get in the Way (more…)
Title: Tales of the Nameless
Author: Clea Saal
This book was born on: May 31, 2018
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: Paperback
Page count: 136 pages
ISBN:978-1720494096
Price: $10.95
Note: This volume contains three short stories. What you have here is the first of them.
A Name You Can Trust (more…)
Yes, I know I’m not perfect, and there are things I hate about myself. One of those is the fact that at times I seem to have a hard time controlling my temper, and while on the one hand I know that is not the most uncommon of traits, the guilt I feel afterwards... well, let’s just say that it is no fun. And how does that connect to my dog? Well, because too often he is the target of that rage. Now, when I say rage I don’t mean I am beating him on a daily basis (or ever), but a couple of nights ago, for instance, after I had barely slept the night before, my boy took it upon himself to start barking like crazy in my ear about an hour after I had finally managed to fall asleep. Let’s just say that the animal in me was not amused, and barked back... loudly. (more…)
Okay, so posting this under a header of A Happy Pessimist may be stretching it more than a bit, but seeing how there is no other category in which it fits better, here it will stay. Just be forewarned that this does get kind of dark. Sorry, that’s the mood I’m in today... and with good reason. Let’s just say that life’s been kicking me hard over the past couple of months, and leave it at that, but now let’s get to the meat of this story (with my apologies to any passing vegans, of course). (more…)
Words are funny things. We use them on a daily basis, and as far as we can remember they have always been there, meaning that they seem incredibly natural to us (which is, oddly enough, one of the reasons learning a foreign language feels so unnatural. I mean, what do you mean ‘dog’ is ‘perro’, that makes no sense! A dog is a dog, end of story, and breaking that association so that both words feel equally natural in our minds is all but impossible). Sure, from a rational perspective we know that is not the case. We know language makes no sense, which explains why we are stuck with so many of the blasted things, and we have all seen babies learning to talk, but words are so integral to the way we think that it is all but impossible for us to conceive a world without them... and yet language...
As you may have noticed, I love my dog to bits. In fact, if I were to be perfectly honest here, I would have to say that I can count the number of people I love as much on the fingers of one hand, and I would probably have quite a few fingers to spare. It is an uncomplicated relationship. I love him, he loves me back, end of story. (more…)
Is it me, or is there something bizarre about the way in which the most absurd displays of excess seem to coexist with the direst warnings of ‘what is to come’ unless we learn to scale back on our consumption, and yes, I am looking at you, Buzzfeed. (more…)
Could we please just give geologists their scale back? I’m asking nicely. I’m also adding my two cents to the debate as to whether the Holocene has given way to the Anthropocene. Now, don’t get me wrong, I get where it is that climatologists, anthropologists, and all those other ‘ologists’ promoting the use of the Anthropocene as a name for a clearly distinct epoch are coming from. I am also incredibly frustrated due to the number of people referring to the proposed Anthropocene as a period, or even an Era. In fact that is the part that bothers me the most because it reflects a basic ignorance of how the geologic scale is supposed to work... which is why I suspect there are so many people arguing on behalf of the Anthropocene in the first place. I also won’t deny that there are some valid ...
As you may have noticed, my dog has been featured rather prominently in this blog lately. Part of the reason is that that ‘dog’ used to be ‘dogs’ until not too long ago, and I’m still mourning his companion. The other reason has to do with the fact that the inspiration for roughly half these posts comes from random thoughts that pop into my mind as I am walking the little rascal. Today’s post is one of those. (more…)
One hundred days ago today I watched my best friend --or rather one of my best friends-- die right in front of my eyes. It was horrible. It was also a moment that changed my life forever, and I find myself in a weird mood. (more…)
No, I’m not a vegan, I’m not even a vegetarian, I would never donate to either Greenpeace or PETA, and even though I consider myself an animal lover, I freely admit that my tolerance for animal rights activists is rather limited. I am also honest enough to acknowledge that that does make me into something of a hypocrite. (more…)
Yes, I know it has become fashionable to look down on history --along with the rest of the humanities-- as a form of glorified navel-gazing. We live in the present, and the past is in the past: there’s nothing we can do to change it, so why bother (besides, we can always google whatever date we happen to need); we should be looking forward, not backwards; and so on, but I am here to tell you that, if used properly, history --or something close to it-- can be one of the most powerful tools in your mental toolkit... you just have to learn to think about it in a different way. (more…)
What you have here is one of my favorite photos of my three boys, one in which you can definitely see their distinct personalities shining through. It is also one of the few I have of my three babies together, as the kitten was only three and a half months old at the time, he had been with us for a little more than two months, and it had only been a few days prior that I had finally allowed my dogs and cat to hang out together (okay, so maybe it would be more accurate to say that it had only been a week since one day, much to my horror, the kitten snuck past me out of the room in which he was being kept, and didn’t get eaten), and we lost Terri less than two months later. In fact we lost him three months ago today, that’s what drove me to share this picture, and yet I hesitate to do it, kn...
