And, Enjoy

OK, I'm back to working on some writing projects. Unless something really pisses me off again, I'll see you all tomorrow.

"We Americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb your cities."
- Robin Williams, "Good Morning Vietnam"

"We've got a generation now who were born with semi-equality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle." - Erma Bombeck

"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with."
- Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Vor Game", 1990

"I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves." - Mary Wollstonecraft

"Things can be really different."
- Joanna Russ

In the Old Town Tonight.

And... here's the fire in the Chicago Loop that was blocking traffic last night as I tried to get home from kickboxing. I'd never seen so many firetrucks and so many diverted taxi cabs in one place before.

This is the second highrise fire they've had in the year I've been here (that one also diverted me on the way home, this time by blocking the pedestrian tunnel between the red and blue train lines, as the building on fire was just above that section of tunnel). In both cases, neither building was outfitted with sprinklers. In the first case, this and some locked stairways resulted in needless deaths.

What is this, 1900?

Contraception Museum

Contraception Museum opens (via boingboing).

In Ohio, of all places.

They've also got a flash presentation of "Obstetric Literature and the Changing Character of Childbirth." If the coils don't make you cringe...

And I snickered when I read the intro to their collection: "Birthing is a normal, yet extraordinary event that has been with us from time immemorial."

I love that they felt they needed to remind readers that birth is "normal" and that women have been doing said birthing "from time immemorial."

We've overmedicalized birth so much that I think people forget this.

Real Men Doing Real Science

I don't care if people write conservative SF, but when they start trying to make a "movement" out of a masturbatory molehill, and start writing up frickin "manifestos" I get really frickin' irked.

You need a manifesto in order to write fiction? Shit, why didn't anyone ever tell me sooner! I better start writing my pet interests into a manifesto, so I can never alter those interests again as I increase my breadth and range of interests as I get older and wiser. Only emotionless heroines! Only bisexuality! Only stories about war! No men allowed!

Now there's a great way to castrate my writing.

It's like watching somebody jumping up and down in a crowded room going, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm hot! I'm hot!" for about 15 mintues before the bullshit factor sets in, and you realize they're actually screaming without any clothes on.

I feel the old sniff of elitism: REAL SCIENCE vs. THOSE CRAZY SWORD & SOCIOLOGY BUG-TECH FREAKSHOWS.

We must get back to Real Science! Real Men Doing Real Science!

REAL MEN (science) vs. FEM FICTION (not "real" science)

Don't think there's not an undercurrent of that there, too. A lot of SF is already terribly conservative. We don't need to put more constraints on tech and social mores to make it more so. Really.

I'm hoping these guys will peter out soon enough.

The discussion's here.

Oh, Canada

This is an old joke, actually. The first Euro trip I did was with a bunch of kids from our high school theatre, and we teamed up with a group of rowdy Canadians for much of the trip, meaning we shared transport and rooms with them.

And let me tell you, everything you suspect about Canadians getting treated better than Americans overseas (expecially in France) is true. The Brits and Canadians, in fact, like to put patches of their country's flags on their backpacks, just to make *sure* they aren't mistaken for Americans.

Try finding an American flag on a backpack.

So the big joke among us theatre kids at our toga party in Rome was that next time, we'd slap a Canadian flag patch on our backpacks and go, "Eh?" a lot.

I need to try it during next year's trip to Glasgow.