Had a whiskey and writing night last night. Very nice. Mostly productive. Felt good to be able to drink alcohol again, and better to be working on my book again.
And for tonight: my favorite beer and some Giordano's pizza. Yay. It's been another long week. 
Friday, April 29, 2005
Friday Beer Blogging
Good Morning, Chiklits
The great thing about Friday morning commutes is that you can always find a seat on the train.
It's the little things.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
If You're Old Enough to Get Pregnant, You're Old Enough to Make Decisions Regarding Your Reproductive Health
Sorry.
That's just the way it is.
The world in the palm of a 13-year-old girl.
Yes. It's her body. Her right. Too bad for you, Florida. Maybe you should have been educating girls and women like her, you know, protecting her life and making sure she lived well and had regular check-ups and knew the ins and outs of birth control. Now it's a little late.
Whose fault is that?
(via bitch)
An Open Letter to Joanna Russ
I've read this one before, but I want to bring it up again:
So I'm going to tell you about it, Ms. Russ, because I think I've just discovered another strategy to suppress women's writing. You wrote the book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, describing in gory detail all the different ways that have been used to disallow, prevent, discourage, disbelieve, discredit, devalue, ignore, categorize, debase, forget, ridicule, malign, redefine, re-evaluate, and otherwise suppress women's writing. I'm sure that you meant to warn us with your book--to warn us that the suppressive strategies are still around, armed and dangerous--and that it's important for women to recognize them and to work against them. But still, I remember (or perhaps I imagined) an up-beat ending to your book and I'm surprised that there really is no happy ending. That the business is still going on today...
It was not one or two or a mere scattering of women, after all, who participated in women's renaissance in science fiction. It was a great BUNCH of women: too many to discourage or ignore individually, too good to pretend to be flukes. In fact, their work was so pervasive, so obvious, so influential, and they won so many of the major awards, that their work demands to be considered centrally as one looks back on the late '70s and early '80s. They broadened the scope of Sf exploration from mere technology to include personal and social themes as well. Their work and their (our) concerns are of central importance to any remembered history or critique. Ah ha, I thought, how could they suppress THAT?!
Gotta scream louder. Write better. It'll get done. Trouble is, after it's done, will anybody remember?
(via Mumpsimus)
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Thoughts on Medicated Depression
The problem with being somebody like me, who is very clear about what works regarding dealing with my "low" days or holiday freakouts, is that when I'm confronted with a serious depression that's actually caused by my reaction to a new birth control pill, I try to "treat" the medicated depression the same way I deal with my low days.... you know, eat right, exercise, try to figure out what it is that's really bothering you. Depression is a message, right?
Yea: IT MEANS THAT THE PILL YOU'RE TAKING REALLY SUCKS.
Which is, of course, the big problem with depression. If you can't physically get up and get out of bed for anything but bare survival (and keep hitting your alarm every morning, when you've never, ever, not in the entire year you've had this 5:15am job, ever hit the alarm in the morning and skipped your weight routine), then it's very difficult to deal with "low" days the way you're used to. About all you can do is crawl into bed when you get home and maybe get some reading done.
Now that I'm back to myself again, I'm starting to realize just how bad it was getting. I figured out what the problem was when I started to burst into tears at weird moments, like on the bus, at work. Hysterical tears for no real reason.
The rest of the stuff - the low energy, the lack of willpower - I could tack up to sheer laziness, or the stress from traveling a month or so ago, or the stress of figuring out what I was doing next, or the stress from being so sick dealing with the *other* consequences of the bc pill. But the weepiness I remembered from when I was a teenager first getting hopped up on hormones.
The great thing about being older - and getting off the pill for six years and then on it again - is that it was pretty obvious to me what was wrong, and instead of trying to continue to pawn it off as just me being "hysterical" or freaked-out, I can call it for what it is: my body's reaction to synthetic hormones.
And my body reacted with a really freaky, really nasty depression.
It's a funny thing, because it's not like I lacked the will to do things, it's just that it felt like there was this gray gauze between my will to do things and the part of me that was actually consciously doing (or not-doing) things, and every day I'd get home and my will would tap-tap me about going jogging, about not eating those fries, about going to MA class, and it's like the conscious part of me just wasn't picking it up. Just wasn't reacting. Like there's something that kept those parts of my brain from actually talking to each other properly. I got pretty disconnected from everything else around me. It's like stuff was going on, and I was aware that time was passing, but I was having trouble really connecting with everything around me.
On Monday, I was taking my usual walk at the nature preserve, and I was like, "Wow! It's spring! When did that happen!" and I actually went around, like, touching trees and stuff. Everything was so bright and shiny.
It was fucking weird, to realize just how out of it I'd been.
Getting up in the morning this week, doing my regular weights routine, hasn't been like pulling teeth, even though I've been staying up talking to B until past 10pm, my usual oh-shit-I'm-going-feel-like-crap-tomorrow-if-I-don't-go-to-bed time.
I decided Monday that I'd start turning my nature preserve walk into a 40-minute power walk, and I'd bring an extra set of clothes into work (I'd jog it, but we still don't have a shower here in the office, so I compromised), and start on Tuesday.
And, suddenly, unlike all the other shit I've been trying to do the last couple months that's been so fucking hard, like ripping something out of myself so I don't feel even worse about myself, I went home, packed my clothes, and did the power walk yesterday, and will continue today, and wow, hey, all the sudden I can really *do* stuff again, without feeling like I'm pushing through a gray curtain!
What bugs me the most about this is that I'm such a stubborn bitch. If I hadn't experienced pretty much *all* of the side-effects related to this birth control pill (depression, nausea, breakthrough bleeding, yeast infection [FROM HELL], weight gain/increased appetite), I would have probably just let the depression thing go. I might have done the adoloscent thing and just been like, "Well, you know, I'm just feeling really low. I did a lot of traveling, I'm not happy with my job, I'm starting a new relationship, I'm not sure where I'll be living in a year, I don't know what to do, I haven't been writing anything, things are just really shitty right now."
And I might have just let it go, because, hey, it was "just" depression! I'd just deal with it the way I always had, and everything would be great! Right!?
Problem was, I could track it. I could say, "It's been about two months, actually, that I've felt this way."
And the connection was just so blaringly in-my-face obvious that I had to make the connection: I started the pill two months ago. I couldn't shrug that off.
And, to be honest, a low period lasting that long was really, really scary, cause there's always that fear that maybe it's *not* the pill, and you'll be stuck that way forever.
In any case, it was a great learning experience, not only for the future, but for the way I view my past. I remember starting the pill when I was 16 and bursting into tears at work one day (in front of my boss, no less), and thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with me?" and moving through a crappy relationship like some sort of zombie.
The pill has always worked for me: no pregnancy! Yay! But it's exacerbated my own occastional tendency to have low days, and it's turned low days into one long sweeping period of gray fog interspersed with that 7-day-no-pill breather period that's just long enough for you to think, "I'm being silly! There's nothing wrong with me!"
Problem was, being the stubborn bitch I am, I never connected the dots when I was younger. Three years of freakouts. Wow. And I didn't even question it. I just told myself I was a hysterical idiot freakshow, and that's just the way things were.
Wow.
It's so great to be back in the world again.
Full of fucktards as it may be.....
Oh, For Fuck's Sake
But in one sense, contraception may indeed be the new abortion -- that is, the next battleground for reproductive rights.
I feel like I'm living in a really, really bad SF novel.
Open Letter to the Fuckers (and friend) I Owe Money To:
Dear Corporate Visa Fucktards:
Why, yes, I realize my corporate card account balance is more than 30 days past due. In fact, it stresses me out, too! It would be a great thing if my fucking employers actually reimbursed me on time, so that I could pay you expediantly and not continue to fuck up my already fucked up credit rating.
Believe me, I would love to pay you so that I didn't have to *pay* late charges incurred because my company is full of accounting snobs, late charges that are not, in fact, reimbursed!
Oh, how I would love to pay you!
But I am a lowly fucking admin, I have no money in savings, and you are just one of many, many people I owe a significant amount of money to.
In fact, you're the luckiest of the bunch, because you will, in fact, get paid within the next four weeks, when the payroll snobs get their shit together and give me my goddamn money back.
Someday, I will have a real job that pays me real money. Today is not that day.
Sincerely Yours,
Corporate Slave
___________________
Dear Great Lakes Student Loan Fucktards:
Why yes, I realize that my fucking student loan payment is due the 20th of every month. Did you fuckers look through your fucking accounts and notice that *I pay you every single month by the end of every month* before you started leaving pissed-off "you fucking owe us money" messages on my machine?
Have I missed a payment in the last year?
Why, fuck, no I haven't!
In fact, your fucking check went in the fucking mail today, so you can kiss my ass.
Sincerely yours,
Super Bitch
__________________
Dear Dell,
Yea. I lost last month's payment.
Sue me.
Your check's in the mail.
Sincerely Me,
Kameron the Great
____________________
Dear Jenn,
Yea. Sorry. You can cash the check tomorrow.
- Kameron
_____________________
The beat goes on.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Chicago SF Signing
There's a big group signing here in Chicago on Sunday, May 1st at the Borders on State Street, downtown.
Signers include Cory Doctorow, Kevin J. Anderson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Eric Flint, Janis Ian, Geoffrey Landis, Todd McCaffrey, Jack McDevitt, Rebecca Moesta Anderson, Mike Resnick, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Steven H Silver, Laurel Winter and W.R. Yates.
When: Sunday, May 1, 11AM-1PM
Where: Borders, 150 North State Street, Chicago, IL (312.606.0750)
Good Morning, Chiklits
Yum. Coffee.
Reminds me I'm alive.
Fun stuff:
Penguins - the next terrorist threat!
Hô Xuân Hu'o'ng
And:
But since 1980, the two groups have taken diverging paths. Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979.
What, you mean, smart, older, wiser people generally make better marriage decisions? No way! Marry `em young, when they don't know any better.
::snort::
Not a study you're going to see toted around next Valentine's Day.
(thanks, Jenn)
Thursday, April 21, 2005
My Favorite Phone Call of The Day
Yellow calling me from the scoping meeting with the client and having me walk the client through their own site tracking system so that they can access the files I've uploaded onto their server.
Ah. Corporate America. Nobody has any idea what they're doing.
Oh, Canada
OTTAWA - Women in Canada should soon have access to the morning-after pill without a doctor's prescription.
The drug levonorgestrel, sold under the brand name Plan B, has been approved for sale directly from pharmacies, Health Canada confirmed Wednesday.
Which, of course, begs the question: if we could do an over-the-counter plan B deal in the US, would we then have check-out clerks who refused to sell you plan B for "moral reasons"?
And yet, we've got people selling liquor and tobacco products. Oh, yes, tobacco kills! What about the Culture of Life!!??. How can those check-out clerks *sleep* at night!!!
But shit, pharmacists are hopping over the line all over the place.
This isn't what I signed up for. Where's my rights? I think we all need a little lesson of the "not everybody thinks like I do" variety.
Think of the amazing peace, love, and understanding that would engender.
Pretty scary.
Stealing is Bad.
This is just great. Makes me want to be a University prof.
Jenn, you might be able to use this one someday....
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
The Update: Still Employed, Almost Not-Sick, Still in Workout Limbo, Still in Writing Limbo, Still... Alive
Finally trekked into PP and said, "Do I just have a Super Yeast Infection from Hell, or what?"
And she's like, "Yea, you just have a Super Yeast Infection from Hell. Here's some Super Medication. Get yourself some over the counter treatment next time right away instead of waiting a week hoping it'll just go away, cause otherwise, it does what it's been doing, lingering and recurring when you're stressed."
Yea.
I seem to have beat this year's sinus problems as well now, but only just. Starting to feel totally human again. It's been a long time.
Also getting off the pill and getting an IUD next Friday, which'll help the depression upsurge, the mood swings, the breakthrough bleeding, lower sex drive, and all-around wackiness I've been dealing with since I got it (oh yes, you all realize, *this* is why it's been so quiet at Brutal Women lately). Between sicknesses of various kinds and general wackiness, I just haven't had the energy to write full-blown rants. My workout schedule crashed and burned, and I need to fucking get back to my fucking MA classes. I'm barely keeping a healthy diet together.
I also found out I owe the equivalent of 1/3 my monthly income in taxes.
For fuck's sake.
My body's stressed out about what I'll be doing after this next year - I still plan to take the LSATs, but more and more, I'm concerned about that path. All I fucking want to do is write books. Do I want to add 100K of debt and have all my free time taken up with law? Yea, it'd be fun to learn - if I could afford it and if it didn't suck the rest of my life from me. More and more, I just want to move to a new city, get a job, and write. Or continue on in this city, and write. But money's a big issue, and I don't do well living on my own. Yea, I can live by myself: I just notice that I do a lot better, mentally, living with other people.
So it's a concern. I'm mulling it over. Things seem to be sliding back into place, but it's taking a long time. I have a year to figure my shit out.
Looking forward to Wiscon at the end of next month. Looking forward to time away from this brain-numbing job.
Looking... forward. In the mean time, things'll be a little off around here. I'm considering shutting down the blog all together, because I think it takes away from my real writing. The alternative is to just continue with these shorter linkage-posts, which are easy, and rant when I feel like ranting, but not make a production out of it. I just don't have the time.
We'll see how it pans out.
How to Score With Chicks (and Real Women, Too)
Nicky counts `em down:
1. Don't be the biggest loser in the whole fucking world
and so on.
Eat Well and Exercise Regularly, but Still "Fat"? Guess What, You're Probably Healthy! Just the Way You Felt All Along!
Got three different taps this mornings about this article in the NY Times (thanks Jenn, B and Maureen!) about the latest, most extensive study done on the relationship between "fat" and "health."
And guess the fuck what?
People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.
and:
And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said.
Well, yea.
Here's the take from the AP version of the story at Alas, A Blog.
I'm going to live forever. Just look in my refrigerator.
Not at my pants size.
Fucktards.
Or, to sum up:
"The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight."
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Music & Writing
James Schellenberg, new columnist at Strange Horizons, has got a piece up in the latest issue where he's quizzed a handful of writers about their music-listening habits while writing.
Oddly enough, James asked for my own take on the subject, and it's sorta cool to see me listed up there with Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, Louise Marley, Nalo Hopkinson, Maureen McHugh and Suzy McKee Charnas.
Most excellent. Go check it out.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Good Things
Deana Carter's CD The Story of My Life. That whole thing United Airlines has, where they play the same four songs from the same six CDs over and over in constant rotation throughout their flights for months on end? Works really well to lure business travelers into buying said CDs...
Michael Faber's incredibly cool and creepy Under the Skin, a book about a female human-looking creature who goes out and picks up male hitchhikers and... well, you'll just have to read it and find out. Deeply creepy, very good. Definately my kind of book.
Chicago's Riveria Theatre, right around the corner from my house. Went to a Westerberg concert there on Friday with B, and had a good time. The acoustics aren't great, but it's a neat venue. Next time, I'm going to buy lots of beer, too. There's just something about a smoke-filled rock concert that makes one want to consume large quantities of alcohol...
Good Morning, Chiklits
Ah, yes, enjoyed a nice, relaxing weekend, arrived comfortably late to work in order to catch up on some sleeping, and am enjoying an absolutely great warm sunny Spring day. The leaves are on the trees, the flowers are blooming, my basil is spouting, and I didn't over-creamer my coffee this morning.
Excellent.
Friday, April 15, 2005
BLAH BLAH BLAH
I'm so leaving early today. As you all can see, the workplace has fried my brain, and there will be nothing but mostly fluff, links, and very little commentary beyond "FUCKTARDS!!" for the rest of the day...
Oh, For Fuck's Sake
Here we go again.
Let's get over this sex thing, OK? We'll lead, happier, healthier lives that way.
Sheesh.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Random Pirate Blogging
Because you can only do about 30 hours worth of uploading onto a client's server before you go batshit crazy.
Pirate Relationships!
Pirate Poem!
Moon Pirate!
Pirates for Dummies!
Pirate legos were the best!
It is Another Beautiful Day, My Chiklits
Picked up some writing music yesterday, as work on my stand-alone novel (was "Jihad," now is the more all-inclusive "God's War") petered out earlier this year and needs to get back on track so I can have a finished book by year's end.
Going through the library catalogue to get more research books. There's jack shit at the public library, but Jenn's got access to the Northwestern U library, which is a great resource.
Also typing up a story I've started working on longhand, which I'd like to get in the mail at the end of the month. I've gotta get some new stuff out. I feel like I'm drowning, and I know a lot of my low-feeling the last few months has to do with the fact that not much fiction's getting written while my job's been throwing me around the country and the rejection slips have been piling up. Creating new worlds, running through stories, I just feel a hell of a lot better when I'm doing it. I've gotten sidetracked, discouraged, and it's time to get better.
I think getting the second agent reject for the fantasy novel (only two actually asked for the 50 pages - the rest were flat rejects) really bit me. Sometimes, you just want to stay low for awhile, clear out your system, before you start again. I've been losing a lot of my self confidence.
And still, I write. And submit.
Cause if I'm gonna do it anyway, I want to get paid for it.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
These Days, Even the Cookie Monster Has an Eating Disorder, Redux
If you're not familiar with Cookie Monster, he's a muppet with an unhealthy obsession with cookies. He completely lacks self control when it comes to his favorite food and often gets himself into trouble because he'll do just about anything for a cookie.
For the past three decades the Cookie Monster has been the monstrous embodiment of gluttony. He has, in other words, always taught children about healthy eating habits.
And now we're dumbing down our television programming even further. Assuming kids won't "get it."
Gosh, it's great to be a stupid Amurikan.
The Real Reason They Don't Like Women Competing Against Men: Cause the Women can Win
...at 10 years old, Makeba Elliott, an honor student at Blackhawk Elementary in Park Forest, has won two consecutive boys' state wrestling championships. Last month, the Park Forest fifth grader -- whose quickest takedown was in 18 seconds -- ended a 54-5 season by taking top honors in the boys' 2005 Midget State Championship. She also won the boys' midget championship in 2004.
But my favorite part is:
Makeba has also been a trailblazer for female athletes at her school. When Blackhawk Elementary was forming a basketball team last year, school officials told Makeba she couldn't join because basketball was for boys and cheerleading was for girls, her father said. Makeba responded by writing a letter to the principal that persuaded him to allow girls on the team, and Makeba now plays point guard.
A Proper Brutal Woman's Bag
You know, I don't carry a purse, but I sure could see myself toting one of these to my next shindig.
BlogHer Conference
via boingboing
BlogHer: Woman-centered blogger con, Sta Clara, Jul 30
The BlogHer conference is a woman-centric conference on blogging to be held on July 30 in Santa Clara, CA:
BlogHer Conference '05 will provide an open, inclusive forum to:
1. Discuss the role of women within the larger blog community
2. Examine the developing (and debatable) code of blogging ethics
3. Discover how blogging is shrinking the world and amplifying the voices of women worldwide
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!
“At Last, You Could Become America's Next Best Selling Author and Reality Show TV Celebrity!”
You know, when we were at Clarion, the idea of a "Clarion Reality TV" series came up - for about three seconds.
SF writers - in fact, writers in general - are not the world's most beautiful people. We're just not. You'd have to fall in love with us the way you fall in love with the characters on Carnivale. We're not plastic people. Our sex is very messy; especially the sort that goes on at Clarions.
And, you know, writers write. We spend most of our time actually hunched in front of keyboards, screaming, "Fucktard!" or laughing maniacally every few hours.
That's about it. Nick's rant about the glam writer's lifestyle, here.
What's that I've Been Saying, Again?
The study found that having obese parents, suffering from depression, and engaging in radical dieting like forced vomiting, were all risk factors for future obesity in adulthood.
"Engaging in these radical behaviors isn't going to stop you from being obese," said psychologist Eric Stice, Ph.D., the lead author of the study. "In fact they're likely to do the opposite."
I'm curious, however, why they chose to focus only on girls.
I guess because being a fat woman is just so much grosser and more dangerous. Of course, women are more likely to engage in vomiting and anorexic behavior, leading to greater percentage of obesity? Or not? Without a comparison among teenage boys, this is sort of floating around in nowhere land.
Malicious Public Blasphemy, Coming Soon
A Greek court will rule on whether to allow sales of a cartoon book from Austria depicting Jesus Christ as a drinking buddy of Jimi Hendrix and a marijuana-smoking, naked surfer.
They charged `em with: "Malicious public blasphemy."
Dude, I so want to charged with malicious public blasphemy. Imagine what it would do to my hit count...
Good Morning, Chiklits
Another day, another dollar, again with the too much creamer in my goddamn coffee. It's like drinking milk.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
These Days, Even the Cookie Monster Has an Eating Disorder
Oh dear.
You know, advocating healthy eating is great and all, and you better bet it's something I'm on top of all the time, but shit you guys...
We're breeding a culture of food paranoia. And I think there's a big risk that instead of making things better, it's going to make things worse. It may, in fact, have been making things worse for a while now.
via bfb
What's this a Symbol of, Again?
These are men who think a great deal about their penises; like Mike, they are submerged. But what concerns Dr. Sharlip is why men feel the need to raise the bar in the first place. Of those who come to him for advice, he says, "the very great majority -- 99 percent -- have normal penile size. It's a psychological problem more than a physical one."
Mike denies that his obsessions with enlarging his penis stem from some primordial trauma. "It wasn't a huge emotional drama I was trying to settle," Mike says. "What guy's not going to want to go out and make his dick bigger?"
Wow. The amount of amazing things we could all do with this time and energy...
Wikipedia – first with the news
Cool note on how Wikipedia and feminist blog rings were the first to report on Andrea Dworkin's death. Those pesky internets: moving far faster than the media at large.
It's like a giant game of telephone.
Religion in the Workplace
To the Editor:
"Moralists at the Workplace" (editorial, April 3) addressed "scattered reports" of employees refusing to perform certain job requirements that conflict with their personal moral or religious beliefs and customers seeking to have these requirements filled. We believe that there is a solution that accommodates the needs of both parties.
Recently, we introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which clarifies current law to say a person's religious beliefs should be recognized and accommodated in the workplace as long as this does not adversely affect the employer's business or customers.
The bill is supported by a diverse coalition of more than 45 religious and civil rights groups as well as a bipartisan group of senators and representatives.
If the bill becomes law, an employee who does not wish to do their job would not have to do so long as another employee is on duty and would do their job for them.
The Workplace Religious Freedom Act provides a sensible solution to the potential conflict between an employee's religious conviction and the needs of their employer and employer’s customers.
I, for instance, am part of a strict no-technology-using religion similiar to that practiced by the Amish. I work for a telecommunications firm where my job requirements include using computers, telephones, and managing projects that aid in the spread of telecommunications technology, which I do not believe in.
Luckily, thanks to this law, I can come into work everyday and have my coworkers do all of this work for me while I write novels longhand.
I believe this solution accomodates the needs of all parties involved.
Kameron Hurley; AA, BA, MA
http://brutalwomen.blogspot.com
Monday, April 11, 2005
Yellow Says Hello
"Don't worry, Kameron, in the next edition of Webster's, wussify will be a word."
"Is that right?"
"Better yet, you can have someone say it in one of your books. Hey, you can have my character say the word, `wussify,' and then you'll have made up a new word, and you can attribute it to my character. Ha ha."
It's great being back in Chicago.
I Am Eating An Orange
.. it is quite tasty.
I have uploaded something like 300 .jpgs onto the client's server.
Only 900 to go.
It's one of those days.
Another Reason Not to Get a Cell Phone
According to a new global survey, fourteen percent of cell phone users have interrupted screwing to answer their cell phones. Just like Paris Hilton. From Consumer Affairs.com report on a subscription-only Ad Age article:
The highest incidence of cellular interruptus was found in Germany and Spain, where 22 percent of users interrupted sex to answer their cell phones; the lowest was in Italy, where only 7 percent reported doing so. In the U.S., the figure was 15 percent, the magazine said, citing a study conducted by BBDO Worldwide and Proximity Worldwide.
via boingboing
Snapshots From My Worklife
Blaine came in this morning and asked me how to print out his contact list from Outlook. I had no idea, but looked it up on Outlook Help and walked him through it.
Yellow came in a while later:
"Kameron, you're a writer. You know all about this spelling stuff. How do you spell wussify?"
"Huh? Like, somebody who's a wuss?"
"Yea, yea. They're a wuss, and by doing something crappy, you're wussified."
"Wussify isn't a real word, Yellow."
"Yea, yea, but if it was, how would you spell it?
"It's not... oh, nevermind. W-U-S-S-I-F-Y."
"Oh, great thanks. See, I knew you'd know how to spell it."
::Yellow bumbles off::
I call after him, "Wussify is NOT A REAL WORD!"
"It's OK. All the guys'll know what I'm talking about!"
This is what I do for a living.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Spring is in the Air
Yellow rode his motorcyle to work today, which was very hot to see.
I really must get myself one of those.
And Friday bagels are EVIL, EVIL, EVIL.
Drowing in work. Behind on e-mail. More later.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Women & Children First
My most excellent local independent bookstore, Women & Children First, has a cool blog.
Thoughts on books and feminism. Cooool.
Redesign
Cory Doctorow's redesigned his own "updates" page as a Movable Type blog. Cool. Check it out.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Bits N Pieces
LSATS are Monday, June 6th at 12:30pm (what, nobody works anymore?), and they'll cost me a pretty penny. Fucktards.
Need to register next payday. There goes my paycheck again.
It's bloody humid in Chicago today. Also, these contact lenses really need to be thrown away.
Ready for the weekend.
What was that? You say it's only Weds?
Fucktards.
Wiscon Set
For all those interested, I've confirmed my Wiscon status, and will be running around Friday-Sunday (May 27-29), heading out Sunday mid-afternoon.
Looking forward to seeing some of you there!
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Randomosity
That's "SF" - "Not only does the University of Liverpool boast a library with the largest collection of science fiction literature in Europe, but from next week it will launch the world's first website dedicated to science fiction research."
Who's Amber Reeves?
"Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days."
"Doctors crack down on videotaping births" - you know, if they're doing their job correctly in the first place, they wouldn't have to worry about videotapes, would they? That's like saying you should take videotapes out of police cruisers so you'll stop catching police officers who use excessive force. Bah. Just one more notch in that whole, "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country" Bushism. What's up with that?
Yea, keep talking. Spread the gloom and doom. Keep that diet industry moving, keep us bulimic, anorexic, and binge-eating until the end of time. Make it a moral disease to be overweight. Spread the self-hate. That sounds real healthy.
There's another way to talk about this. And shit like that ain't it.
One of Those Days
State of the Union
To sum up: it's been a bitch.
Want to know the last time I actually wrote something substantial and actually finished it? Oh, I don't know... about 4 months ago? Three, if you count a chapter of something as "finishing." I think I've only got two or three stories in the mail. Utterly pathetic.
And no sooner had my traveling schedule settled down than I came down with a sinus infection, leading to this, which led to that oh-so-female malaise (antibiotics + sex = much, much discomfort) that required me to eat a lot of yogurt and sent me scuddling to bed early and avoiding MA classes and exercise of any kind for the last two weeks. Now that that's over (a week of "what the fuck is this?" followed by most of a week of yogurt-eating and cranberry juice-swilling while symptoms eased off), my sinuses are acting up again, and I feel like a walking vector of disease.
About the only good news I've got is that things at work appear to be settling down, which means I'm back to working with Yellow and Dee on manageable projects (300 sites instead of, say, 1200) where I have a clearly defined role and a clearly defined "boss". It makes doing actual work a fuck of a lot easier.
I also managed to lose my internet card Somewhere in New Jersey, so I don't have net access from my computer at home (I called NJ today and had them go back to the walk-up computers and look for the computer slipcase and card, but they couldn't find it, and nobody'd turned it in), so I've been getting a lot of reading and sleeping done at home. I really need to call RCN tonight and get them to help me configure my internal wireless card - for some reason, it's been having trouble picking up on our network, and I tried to print something out on Jenn's computer yesterday and fucked up her printer somehow. There's nothing better for roommate relations that fucking up something that belongs to your roommate while she's in high stress mode, especially when if I'd have called RCN in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to use her printer.
Fuck-ups galore.
In fact, I've been doing altogether too much reading and sleeping lately, though I'm hoping that being ailment-and-immediate-stress-free will help get me out of my funk. Though workouts have gone out the window the last 6 weeks or so (it got to the point where I couldn't even manage to get down to the hotel gym, I was feeling so low), I've been back into my morning weights routine the last couple of weeks, and it looks like this'll be the week I get back to my workouts.
I've been trying to decide what I want to do about my MA school, and whether or not I want to switch to a gym that's got more bang for less buck. I can get pilates classes with more flexible times, kickboxing classes, and access to a full range of gym equipment, which'll make 5-6 days a week of workouts that much easier (6th day being merely a pilates day). As it is, I physically can't double up on MA classes on Mon/Weds because of how late I get home from downtown, and I hate going in more than 3 times a week because 1) I start getting sick of the place and feeling obsessive 2) I need those Tues/Thurs/Fri days to be a little different so I can shake up the routine. Keeping Tues/Thurs as jogging days'll be great - until winter hits again. I'd like to have a gym much, much closer to my place that gives me greater flexibility for less money.
So after much thought, it looks like I'll be switching over to a new gym come May/June, at least for the summer. If I miss my MA classes too much, I can always switch back. We'll see what I think of the set-up. As it stands, the ease with which I'd get there is just staggering, and it's just a few blocks from home. If I want to be at the place I want to be with my weight/fitness by year's end, I've gotta ramp up these workouts, and having a place downtown where I'm locked into a 45 min class + transit time just isn't cutting it. And yea, the gym cost will be half what I'm paying for MA classes, and honestly, money's really hurting right now. Too many health care expenses the last couple of months, bought a new bed, need to get to Wiscon (doesn't look like Glasgow is even feasible). Shit to do, and the bills aren't going away, either.
LSATs are also in June, and I need to call and see where the local test is being administered. I've also got to seriously ramp up my study, if I don't want to bomb the damn thing.
Taxes are also due, and have to get done this weeked, as B is in town the next weekend, and well, next Friday *is* the 15th. Fuck, I better not fucking owe anything. I don't have any damn money. Fucktards.
On the other good news front, the weather's finally clearing up to sunny 70s Chicago spring weather, and though my workouts have sucked, I've actually got my diet pretty well figured out. I added in 2-3 extra servings of fruit/veg every day and started taking a multi-vitamin, and I have a feeling the last of my binge-twinges are ready to go by the wayside. Overall, I feel pretty good on that front.
It also turns out that I didn't overspend myself as badly as I thought I did this weekend, so I'll just be able to afford the paintball outting with Jenn and the rest of her grad department on Saturday - and still manage to pick up a couple of groceries, too.
Having money with which to actually do things is always nice. Someday, I'll figure out this money thing. Until then, it's paycheck to paycheck.
And everything else is day-by-day.
Here's to hoping shit starts moving, and things get better.
Monday, April 04, 2005
These Are Still Damn Funny
My favorites of the Locus "Next Wave" of Year's Best Anthologies:
The Year's Best Stories by Old Farts Who Were Once Young Turks (co-editor Norman Spinrad)
The Year's Best New Weird-ish Tales by Cornered & Tasered Non-New Weird Writers (co-editor David Brin)
The Year's Best Retold Folktales Involving Fairies, Sprites, or Pixies (co-editor Nick Mamatas)
The Year's Best Hard SF for Soft-Core Porn Readers (co-editor Anne Rice)
The Year's Best Kathryn Cramer Blog Entries (edited by David Hartwell)
The Year's Best Interstitial Ficciones (edited by a large committee of sixty or seventy writers)
Geeks are great.
Time to Write the SF Story
Damn, I didn't even realize you could skew it this way. But you can:
"Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.
The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds."
What happens when Jewish/Muslim/Athiest doctors decide they don't want to administer health care to Christians?
Bet they'll nip that in the bud real fast.
Sorry, people: you go into health care, you help people. Everybody. That's the job. That's why we have a Hippocratic oath.
Shit.
via feministing
Somebody Else Said it For Me
Adrienne, on the mixed legacy of the Pope. I pretty much agree with everything she says. Whew. Now I don't have to write up my own post...
Saturday, April 02, 2005
I Love Living in a Blue State
Thank you, Chicago.
I'll be interested to see how this turns out after the 150 days is up.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Friday Beer Blogging
Drink something with alcohol in it for me. 
Beer is good. Friday is good.
Life is good.
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