Debate Prep

Debate Prep: Shamlessly stolen from Jesus' General

-----------
DEBATE PREP

We have to be on our toes for tonight's debate. It's very probable that Our Furious Leader will go into a violent fit of rage, pull a piece from his waistband, and shoot Bob Schieffer. We can't prevent it from happening--killing is how Our Leader deals with frustration. We can, however, try to put a positive spin on it. I've created the following talking points to help you do just that...

*Sure, Our Leader killed a respected journalist on national TV, but Kerry forgot Poland. The liberal media is showing its bias by not reporting that too.

*Did you see that perfect military style shooting stance?

*Hey, didn't the terrorist threat level just go to red?

*Schieffer is a French name, isn't it?

*Our Leader isn't afraid to exercise his God-given Second Amendment rights on the campaign trail.

*Klinton did it with the pipe wrench in the billiard room.

*He's going to lower your taxes!

*OK, so Schieffer didn't actually have weapons of mass destruction program related activities stuffed in his sock. He was thinking about getting them.
------

The Labyrinth is Out

No, I haven't read it yet, but Catherynn M. Valente's The Labyrinth is out, and it looks hellacool. I get paid on Friday....

From Publishers Weekly
In Valente's surreal, image-driven first novel, centered on the Greek myth of the Minotaur, a female Theseus details the bizarre landscape of the Minotaur's maze and its unique flora and fauna. These include a wisdom-dispensing monkey guide, a mystery-solving "Meaningful Lobster" straight out of Lewis Carroll and numerous other creatures who evoke works of classic fantasy and mythology. The pursuing entities in the claustrophobic maze-world are not the bull-headed monsters of legend but doorways to other dimensions, which the characters spend much of their time avoiding. Most of the action is internal, as characters swap life stories, exchange experiences and try to solve their way out of puzzles philosophically. The author's poetic prose simmers with paraphrases from Blake, Milton, Shakespeare and other literary heavyweights, and this often gives her descriptions stimulating depth and richness. Sometimes, though, her sentences groan under the weight of images awkwardly layered and fused to express the unique chaos of this private universe. Readers who luxuriate in the telling of a tale and savor phrases where every word has significance will enjoy the challenge of this fantasy. Others may find its maze of language an impenetrable mystery.

A Mixed Bag

Had a pretty good boxing class last night, and met Sifu Dino for the first time. He generally teaches on Tues. and Thurs. but he was out last week, so I didn't bump into him (last week was the first time I was doing classes in addition to my usual Mon/Weds). He seems cool, very loud and high energy, really likes what he does. He and Sifu Katalin played tag-team with the two classes going on simultaneously - Boxing and Krav Maga - which meant you got to work with both of them no matter what class you took, which was... different. Not so structured, but in a good way, cause it kept you on your toes.

In other news, I've been shrugging off the whole "Does Bush Wear a Wire?" internet debate because I thought it was a lot of smoke and mirror lefties snickering at each other. Then I caught this article on Salon.com, and I'm thinking I may be one of the clueless hookwinked. Bush apparently has a lot of problems with telepromters (he's dyslexic), and this sort of push-to-talk system would have been a great tool to use on the campaign trail. My thoughts are thus: if the pres. *does* wear a transciever so he can be in constant contact with the secret service, why didn't the White House just say so? If that's all it was, there wouldn't be anything to hide. Same as if it's some sort of weird bullet-proof vest of some kind. You'd owe up to it. Stop the controversy. Instead, they're flat out saying it's absolutely nothing, and we're all freak shows. The more you don't owe up to shit, the more conspiracy theories. Just tell is straight, folks. Oh. I forgot. That's not how you run a White House...

And, to keep you pissed off - voter fraud in Las Vegas. Of course. Aimed at Democrats. Of Course. Think you're registered? Think again! (you know, when I filled out my registration form, I wrote in "Independent." I thought that was really fucking conspiracy-theory cyncical, at the time). Did I need to mention that Nevada's a swing state?

And, to further baffle you with my mixed link bag o' goodness, I just had to include this.

For the record, no, I have no idea what the hell the brown teeth things are supposed to be: vagina dentate? (update: I have since been told that they are domokun)

via Pinko Feminist Hellcat

War Doesn't Work Without Women

My buddy Jenn forwarded me a reading list for Duke University's military history majors and minors. To be fair, this was a reading list compiled in 1995, and the note at the top says the instructor was compiling a 1999 list, but I can't find it, and h-net (a big history geeks list) is still toting this a great recommended reading list for military history (ie History of War and Warfare).

What bugs me about such a great, comprehensive list?

Oh. The "comprehensive" part.

There are 100 books on this list. Their topics cover a time period of about 5,000 years or so.

1) Not one book's major topic is the gendered nature of war/masculinity building/rite of passage of war (Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites, would be a great pick for this, though other do very well).

2) Not one book's major topic is women's roles in warfare (supporting/promotion of - there are about a bazillion of these books, particularly covering WWI and WWII). Think supporting roles aren't a viable part of "military history"? Bullshit. Every heard of "logistics"?

3) Not one book covers women's participation in violent combat as guerilla fighters, in, say, Vietnam, and my area of interest - Southern Africa (Cock, Jacklyn. Colonels and Cadres: War and Gender in South Africa. New York, Oxford University Press, 1991 - among many others. Unfortunately, my biblio isn't online). In fact, not much is said about the military history of Africa at all.

4) Unless initials are hiding gender, not one book of the 100 is written by a woman. I'd bet not one is written by anybody whose skin darkens much past tawny, either.

This shit really bugs me. Why does it really bug me? Because once I got into my women-and-war Master's thesis and subsequent book research for future projects and personal interest, I felt really ripped off. I honestly thought there weren't many women warriors at all, that women had always been kinda suckered into being couriers and damsels-in-distress. Seriously, I really thought this. Sure, you had all those Mythical women from Ancient Times, but what did we know about them, really?

Then I started reading all these books. I started reading about all these women who not only defended hearth and home during those times when men went out to kill each other and other women, but women who crossdressed and joined up - or didn't hide their sex at all, but were so damn good nobody cared what sex they were. I read about women passing out white feathers to men who didn't enlist in WWI - shaming men into heading off to war. Women who did all the laundry, cooked all the meals, cleaned the guns, brought ammo to the front, nursed the wounded, and yes, even picked up guns and fought for their damn lives, because that's what people do when they're at war. WAR DOES NOT WORK WITHOUT WOMEN. Women must support the war and soldiers. They have to maintain homes. They have to take up arms. They have to burn fields and farms when the enemy gets in. If women don't support war, wars don't happen. They can physically pick up a gun or not, and sure, war will march on, but UNLESS WOMEN ARE SUPPORTING WAR, IT CAN'T HAPPEN.

In our country, WOMEN HAVE TO VOTE for war. We make up 51% of the population. Yea, yea, patriarchal society and all that. Maybe if we weren't so concerned with how skinny we could be today, we'd be more interested in politics. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Hence, the popularity of Lysistrata. Still. Thousands of years later. It's a comedy, sure - but I think it's using the sex so it doesn't have to say just *how* important women's continued involvment in and support of war keeps the machine running. Women in some societies have kicked men out of the house for not fighting, for being cowards. Women have killed and butchered bodies. Women have always fought, and have always supported men fighting. They had to. Because if they hadn't, there wouldn't be wars. They would have stopped. 49% of the population CANNOT continue to fight without the support of the other 51%. That's just simple numbers.

Is war primarily a male sport? You betcha. That's why there's so many books on it. Yet here we've got a list of 100 books about men carving people up, and not one of them explores *why*. Why primarily men? And if it's so inherently male, why do women fight? Why can they be just as brutal - or more so? Because women are people too? And why are some men so terribly bad at fighting? Why is there an entire coercive system in place socializing men to fight? Not one book addresses that. The list makes assumptions. The list is "specialized" enough to add a book about the history of the US Marines, but one book about female guerilla fighters is just too much. Apparently.

I feel ripped off. And I have a feeling a lot of other women who start in on all this "alternate" or "specialized" reading about what the hell the other half of the world does during a war (when they're not getting raped and killed - our assumed default role) are gonna be pretty pissed off, too.

This One's A Winner

I admit it - this one's from a wacky little nut (anti-semitic, too?), but it deeply amuses me. Can't you just see it?

We're not at war! We're supporting Israel's fight against terrorism!

I kept wondering how on earth we were going to figure out how to go to war with Iran. I mean, hell, throw in another shitty desert country. This is a fun little test-run scenerio, don't you think?

Why are we going to war with the Middle East? Cause Bush slept through four years of college and doesn't know who finally got their asses handed back to them in the Crusades.

Another Great Electoral Map

Here's another great electoral map, this one is running data based on the day's current polls. It's cool.

Kerry was at 280 to 254 yesterday, down today 260 to 274.

Fun to watch.

More On How Geeks Get Through It

Had an exhausting class last night - Mondays are always a bitch, because I'm coming back to it after a break.

We were doing the classic Monday cardio and technique class, three minutes of jump roping, then three minutes of bag work, one two, one two, then some pushups, back to ropes and bags, then pushups again, then, dear lord, we're jump roping again, and then - 100 punches, GO!

Toward the end, I was keeping myself afloat by imagining that each time I jumped over the rope, I was jumping over a sword. I pictured one of the heroines from the first book I tried to sell a couple years ago - a sandfighter named Nalah - hopping over her teacher's sword in the desert, again and again and again as her mentor taught her to jump over low sword swipes. I tried closing my eyes while jump roping, but that was a no-go. It fucked with my balance, and I almost keeled over.

Sword swipe. Jump. Jump. Again. Jump. Jump. Keep going. Jump. Jump. She'll take your legs off. Jump.

I'm reading this really stupid fantasy book. Jump. Jump. And there's this male hero who supposedly keeps himself in really good shape so he can act as a sexy consort in this sendentary royal court. Jump. Jump. But there's never any scenes with him, like, exercising. Jump. Jump. Or sweating outside of bed. Jump. Jump.

Why don't we see the hard fucking work? Outside of bed?

Jump. Jump.

Fiction writers are lazy. You teach people that being wicked tough is either really easy or some kind of sexy birthright.

Fuckers.

Jump. Jump. Oop. Bag work time.

ONE HUNDRED PUNCHES. GO!

Fuck.

Stolen Words

I stumbled on this over at Hugo's place. It's by Sharon Olds, and after reading this, I'll be picking up some of her stuff.

Just beautiful.

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Interactive Election Map

Run your own Test Election.

This Electoral College crap has got to go.

Via jed

Fuck You All - I'm Eating a Bagel

Is it really neccessary to bring *more* food into a workplace where we all sit on our asses all day and read blogs and check our email incessently?

Oh, fuck it. I've got kickboxing four days this week. I'm eating another bagel.

Bastards.

Ah, Young Love

Amanda's picking apart our trusty MSN advice columns again. This time, MSN is trying to aid those poor, poor middle-aged men seeking 18-year-old sweethearts.

Poor, poor boys.

---

William, 45, has always dated younger women. It was only recently, however, that he detected a pattern in those relationships. “I end up raising them — helping them solve their problems, grow up and expand their horizons,” he says.

Indeed, it is a lot of work helping your love select what college she wants to go to, especially if that means she might be moving away.

On the most obvious level, there’s that fun, young energy they have. There’s naiveté, which can be attractive when compared with the cynicism of some older women.

Remember how your ex-wife used to correct you when you made mistakes? "Oh no, honey, that's not Cary Grant, that's William Holden." Cynical bitch. When you're dating Bambi, you can tell her the moon is made of green cheese and she'll believe you. Not only is that ego-boosting, but it's entertaining.

All of these things, though mutually beneficial for a while, eventually wear thin for most women.

“If the relationship is… based on the man being a sort of father or mentor figure, problems can – and likely will – arise once [the younger woman] really begins to grow and come into her own,” Masini notes. “Even for couples where there is little-to-no age discrepancy, people often grow in different directions, leading to the dissolution of the relationship.”

That and your young love starts whining that boys her age don't need Viagra and don't want to be called "Daddy" in bed.

----

I'm totally going out and picking up an 18-year-old hottie.... The sex would be fantastic. Problem is... what, exactly, do you *talk* about? Hell, I won't date 33-year-old men who have nothing to say. Where's the *real* erotic tension?

What's the Ray Bradbury quote - "All the women in my life have been librarians, English teachers or booksellers. If they couldn't point the way to Usher and Ox, it was a no go. I have always longed for education, and pillow talk's the best."

I want to see an MSN advice column on how men should look for intelligence in their long-term partners. Funny. You probably *will* see an advice column like that - only it'll be pointed toward a female audience, and tell those fickle women not to be so picky.

Get me a boy and book.

On Polyamous Matriarchies and Selling Books

My buddy Jenn and I went to brunch over at Mary Anne's yesterday and ate good food and talked shop. I also had the opportunity to meet Jennifer Stevenson, who wrote the recently released trash sex magic. We talked about selling novels - it apparently took Jennifer about twenty years to sell hers - and I found myself terribly uncomfortable talking about my finished book. I tend to shrug it off when people ask and say, "Oh, it's just classic epic fantasy."

But that's not going to sell a book.

Jennifer was talking about finding a "high concept idea" spin for your book. She launched into hers - trash sex magic was about a promiscuous woman, a hussie, who lives in a trailer park and falls in love with a tree... Only - she says it way better than that, and when she's done with her spiel, your eyes light up and you think, "Hot damn, I have to *read* that!"

She told me not to feel too bad: it only took her twenty years to condense the concept down into something that made dollar signs flash in the eyes of editors and agents. We trotted out ideas from my book: priests who practice biological warfare, shadow knights who ride dogs into battle, the kitchen-girl-who-would-be-queen in a polyamous matriarchy.

"Go with the polyamous matriarchy," Mary Anne said.

Always get straight to the sex... it sells more books. When Mary Anne introduced Jennifer and said, "Oh, she wrote this book," and handed me trash sex magic, well, I'd already heard of the book - it's tough to forget a title like that, and it's always cool to meet an author whose work I know.

I've had a tough time trying to condense my book into soundbites that make for good cocktail party conversation. I'd finally figured out how to do that with my thesis project in South Africa because I was asked so many times. Now I've got to work on 1) my 1-line spiel 2) my 60-second Editor's Dollar Signs spiel 3) my 5-minute, chatting with other writers about my book spiel.

I hate talking about myself (though I could *write* about myself all day...). I've been taught that talking about your accomplishments is akin to bragging. Bragging is rude. You should always listen twice as much as you speak. But I was being asked about my book three or four times over the course of the brunch, and every time, my chest seized up and the mortal fear came over me and I wanted to say, "It's nothing, no, really, just an epic fantasy. You know, classic epic fantasy stuff. With polyamous matriarchies. And weird social structures. Oh, and giant dogs. And end-of-the-world, purging-magic-users stuff. You know. Kitchen girl who would be queen. It's classic fantasy, only there are women in it. And everybody gets laid."

So I went home after the brunch and thought about High Concept Ideas while I cleaned the bathroom floor. George R.R. Martin could say he was writing an epic fantasy loosely based on the War of the Roses. I'm writing an epic fantasy where priests practice biological warfare, shadowy knights ride dogs into battle, and a kitchen girl struggles to become queen of a polyamous matriarchy at the brink of destruction as magic-users are purged from the continent. Oh, and there's some sex scenes. And some men kept in harems. And lots of fights scenes. Did I mention the sex?

It's a starting point.

Yada, Yada

Here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting medical studies:

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans, British or Canadians.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans, British or Canadians.

3. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans, British or Canadians.

4. The Italians drink large amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans, British or Canadians.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans, British or Canadians.

6. Ukrainians drink a lot of vodka, eat a lot of pirogues, cabbage rolls and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Americans, British or Canadians.

CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you

Via metaquotes

If the Presidential Debates were Moderated by Science Fiction Fans...

Matt Cheney's got a great post up - What if the Presidential debates were run by SF fans? They might go something like this:

MODERATOR: Welcome to the first World Science Fiction Presidential Debate, sponsored by Tor Books and Baen Books. Let's start right off. What do you think about the threat of clones and/or cyborgs replacing middle-class workers? Mr. President?

BUSH: I'm against it. In my administration, no cloning will go for money. I was talking with Tommy Franks just the other day about cloning. The President has to be strong on cloning. You have to make decisions. My opponent has been in the Senate since the end of eternity, and he has never once made any. Decisions. And that's bad. The American people expect cloning to be against God's will. It's like abortion with stem cells, which I supported very much, it's important, it's the beginning of the start of something, but there's morality. The President has to be moral.

MODERATOR: Senator Kerry, a rebuttal?

KERRY: I'm glad you asked that question. Considering that cloning is, at the moment, a theoretical venture, we must be certain that what I voted for is what was enacted, which, if you consider what this administration has accomplished, is very little. It's a complicated issue. The President has shown no leadership on this subject, and it's a subject we can't approach with folded hands. My plan will accomodate clones and non-clones, it will allow cyborg technology to be explicated by the best minds in the universe, and it will cut the deficit in half.

MODERATOR: How do you feel about genre-bending movements such as The New Weird and Interstitial Arts? Are they a threat to the purity of science fiction and fantasy? Senator Kerry?

KERRY: I believe that we can have a large movement all together, and that the tent we live in -- or, rather, everyone here but the President and I and, I'm sorry to say, you Mr. Moderator [chuckles] -- that tent -- it's large and can contain multitudes. What's new and weird is the President's approach in Iraq. If we had made alliances, we would have an interstitial approach to foreign policy, but at the moment, the failed policies of this administration have given us a maze of death which our troops are dying inside.

MODERATOR: Mr. Bush?

KERRY: What's new and weird is my opponent's love for Saddam Hussein. Look, I don't know half of what he's talking about, I don't understand any of the words he's using, but I know I'm right. And that's not weird, and it's not new.

Continued here

What's Goin' On

Bear with me, as I am resurfacing from the land of the dead...

Only to read via mousewords about a woman's "romantic" memoir about her discovery of self through sodomy: "You open your ass and you open your mind and you open your heart."

WTF?

Oh. She's from New York. I mean, what kind of person gets these sorts of questions about their book "Can you talk a bit about the connections you make in the book between being anally penetrated and finding God?"

I think that pretty much says all you need to know.

Apparently, she's really sure that her book will anger feminists - this is something that really gets her riled up. But you know, I don't think feminism is the issue, here, when she "keeps the condoms-and-K-Y detritus of their [she and her anal lover's] unions and a baggy-full of his pubic hair in a little memory box", probably on her dresser. This has less to do with feminism and more to do with being a wacky, malnurished nut-job. Are all ballerinas this neurotic? She needs to go out to eat more, and find some other hobbies. Sex is great. Fetishes are fun, and no doubt there are some men out there who keep used condoms from their male lovers in little boxes under their beds... or not. You need to get out once in a while, woman. Damn.

Speaking of sex, over at Utopian Hell and Hugo's place, there's some debate going on about how the sexuality of youth is being contained in the bodies of young women - that is, when we talk about curtailing "hook-ups" and other sorts of casual sex behavior, what everybody's argument turns back to is how to convince young girls to be ashamed about having sex whenever they want to - even if it's safe sex.

The assumption being, I suppose, that men have this really amazingly uncontrollable sexuality: whatever. It's interesting, however, that both Hugo and Astarte bring church lingo into the debate, and how the diffusion of church doctrine in our society has targeted young women. Nobody ever asks if a guy regrets having sex "too early" or "with the wrong partner." What really got me about this discussion was what Amanda pointed out: women are encouraged to have deeper feelings for those partners they have sex with, because if they don't have deeper feelings, they're "sluts." I know that's something I've always struggled with: Am I in a deeply loving, committed, monogamous relationship with this person? If the answer was no, I'd feel terribly guilty for getting involved at all, even if I, the Evil Woman, was just interested in something purely temporary.

I've often wondered how much of the cliche of "women always want to get emotionally involved and men don't" thing has to do with putting pressure on men to treat sex casually, and pressure on women to treat sex like one's only item of self-worth. Sure, having sex with someone you feel affection toward is what it's all about - but why does it have to be monogamous and looking-toward-the-longterm before women get to have "guilt free" sex?

Glad there are people moving past that.

Snapshots From My Domestic Life

Me: Hey, Jenn, I just finished the copy of Zelazny's Guns of Avalon that you loaned me.

My buddy Jenn: Great! How did you like it?

Me: It was cool. Zelazny does in 200 pages what all these other writers do in a ten book series. Though, if we put Martin into that category... I'd taken a Martin doorstopper any day. They're just... different modes of writing. I read Martin to get that really complex character stuff, really big, complex politics. Zelazny'll take you there and back again in 200 pages. Cool in itself, but you're going through all these neat, crazy worlds, you know, like the furry people?

Jenn: Oh, I wouldn't know. I haven't read the Amber books.

Me: ::looking at pile of 6 Amber books sitting on my bedside::: But... you have *all* of the Amber books. You've had them for... years and years and years.

Jenn: Yea. I know. I never got around to reading them.

Me: Like the 800 other books in this house that you haven't read?

Jenn: Yea.

Me: You're nuts.

I then go and start reading the next in the line of eight books I'm currently reading all at the same time.

We have a great house.

French Speak, and All That

I'm finishing up Angela Carter's Heroes & Villains (which I enjoy because it's - because it's Angela Carter), and there's this quote at the beginning:

"Ou fuir, dans un pays inconnu, desert, ou habite par des betes feroces, et par des sauvages aussi barbares qu'elles?"

Now, my grandmother is from France (she was a war bride, straight out of formerly-occupied Nancy), my father was born there and lived there for seven years and used to speak fluent French, and I've taken two years of college French, but because I'm an American, I'm not fluent in any second language like, say, everybody else in the rest of the world. However, I do know that this says something about deserts, and living, and savages, but I can't lick it out, so I engaged the help of these... um, not-so-helpful translators:

From Babble Fish:

"Or to flee, in does an unknown country, desert, or live by betes feroces, and qu'elles such cruel savages?"

From Google:

"Or to flee, in does an unknown country, desert, or live by betes feroces, and savages as cruel as they?"

From Free-Translator:

"Or to flee, in does an unknown country, deserted, or live by wild animals, and savages as cruel as they?"

I'm assuming this is an expansion of Nietzsche's "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster," quote.

Likely, it means something like this: "Or in fleeing into an unknown country, desert, or place of wild beasts, does one become as cruel as they?"

Reminds me that I should be taking French classes on Saturdays. And reminds me just how lacking all of these online translators still are.

Outta Here

I'm taking tomorrow off work to do some less distraction-filled fiction writing.

Just got back from lunch, where I was told that my credit card had expired ::insert a moment of mind-numbing terror here:: Gave over my bank card. Unfortunately, my bank card only had $10 on it, and lunch came to $11.53.

To my surprise, said card went through - Dell hasn't cashed my $100 computer payment yet. But when they do, guess who's getting double check-bouncing charges! Me! Me!

I have $1 in my wallet. I'm going to the bank tomorrow morning and putting it into my account (which now stands at exactly $99.37 - wouldn't that be great, getting charged $60 in check bouncing fees for 53 cents?). And then I'm going through all my stuff so I can figure out where I put my new Master Card.... otherwise, I'm not buying any groceries this week.

Credit: a liberal arts major's best friend.

The Way to Run a Debate

This is how the debate should have run. Now *that* would have been a smart, informed, pissing contest.

Smart guys are hot.

Today's Mixed Bag

Wheee! The Ladies' Auxillary is going to Iraq! To teach Iraqi women how to be "real women" instead of Evil Feminists! Go Lynn Cheney!

And, for something completely different:

Be sure to check out Team America sneak peaks coming in on the 9th, with an opening day of the 15th. If you haven't heard about it (do you live in a hole in the ground?) it's the latest raunchy offering from Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. They're out to put the "F" Back in Freedom - with puppets.

Here's an interview snippet, which helps illustrate why I love these guys:

"For better or worse, we don't have a manager, we don't have a publicist, we don't have a managed image, you know what I mean? We can fucking do whatever we want," Stone says.

"And sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it totally fails, but we just do what we want, 'cause you know, the times we've done what we want, it turned into South Park, which everyone told us would be a big failure.

"If we're gonna lose -- if we're gonna be fuckin' losers -- we're just gonna lose our own way."

The Writing Life, & etc.

My buddy Jenn forwarded this to me: THE SECRET DIARY OF EDITOR #19!

And, my personal favorites:

THE SECRET DIARY OF CLUELESS NEWBIE #43

and

THE SECRET DIARY OF FRUSTRATED WRITER #77

Hot Time On the Old Town Tonight

Yesterday was the third day in a row of fighting classes, and I still haven't managed to shake this cough of mine, and it appears to be culminating in the loss of my voice (this happens at least twice a year, during the changing of the major seasons).

So at about 40 minutes into class last night, I was exhausted - body shaking, sore muscles, wobbly stance exhausted. We were doing a cardio Krav Maga class, which is heavy bag work (kicking and punching techniques) cut through with ab work, lunges, and push-ups.

As we got to the very end of class, Sifu Katalin had us get into and hold a plank position. This isn't actually a very difficult thing to hold - it's basically holding yourself up into a push-up position, tightening up your core, and holding it for a minute. Doing this as part of a pilates class, or at the *beginning* of any other class, isn't difficult in the least. Doing this at the end of a cardio Krav Maga class, as the third day in a row of classes when you're used to doing two days a week... was harder.

"Hold it," Sifu Katalin said. "Twenty more seconds. Close your eyes if you have to. It'll help. Get through it."

And I closed my eyes and quite literally went away. My brain just sort of clicked off from my body and said, "See ya," and I fell back into my writerly fantasyland - I think I ran through some Delaraan plot point I'm cleaning up in book one, with dancing and dog riders.

I descended into blackness for the last twenty seconds, until Sifu Katalin said: "Time" - and then I crumpled.

Tuesday was a really frustrating boxing class. I was paired with an Amazon-like purple belt, Jai, who helped me through the uppercuts. I find throwing uppercuts to the body really awkward, and I've apparently been keeping my feet too narrow while in my fighting stance. I wasn't feeling well, and I was really fucking frustrated.

Jai said, "How long have you been doing this?"

I lied and said three months, when in fact it's been four. That's how bad I thought I was doing.

She just laughed at me. "I've been doing this three years," she said, "and I used to teach boxing at another school. Don't get frustrated. C'mon, tall girl, you've narrowed your stance again."

My friends have gotten to the point where they know me well enough to help me understand the significance of events in their lives by giving me a writing analogy. My buddy Ryan was asked by a formidable guest dancing instuctor to give an example of a form during class, and he said - without my prompting - "It would be like a really famous author holding up an example of your work to the class and saying, `this is how it's done.'" My buddy Patrick once explained how me dropping out of being a bridesmaid at my best friend Stephanie's wedding would be "on par with an editor buying your novel, getting through rewrites and bluelines and shit, and then saying, 'Oh, hey, we just had a strategy shift, and we need this all ironed out in one book -- and we need there to be at least three enormous fight scenes with riding dogs in them. You've got ten days, or else the book will never get published.'"

I love my friends.

So, coming home from class last night, sore and exhausted and knowing that I still had one more class tonight in order to hit my new four-days-a-week goal, I equated my frustration with a wannabe writer being pissed off because they wrote for an hour every day for four months, and they still weren't making a living by writing books.

And I thought of how long and hard I would laugh at that person.

I'm doing OK.

Heh heh

Sorry so quiet today - I spent all morning trying to figure out where I'd found this:



It's here. I found a commenter over at Atrios who pointed faithful readers this way...

I only managed to catch about 20 minutes of the VP debate, because I'm still fighting off some sickness, and I had my MA class last night. I don't remember ever finding politics this entertaining - I think the entertainment value goes up the more informed you are. Within about a minute and a half, I understood why everybody says that Cheney's the brain-behind-the-Bush. After watching Bush blustering through his bashing by Kerry, seeing Cheney lie and dodge like a pro was really neat. Edwards, I thought, came off as terribly boyish and excited, which may have undermined some of his credibility, but ultimately, he seemed to be having a really great time, while Cheney looked increasingly tired and bored.

For all the "joking" about Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker... well, the resemblences were pretty funny.

More From the Fighting Life

This is the first week of four days worth of classes - Mon, Tues, Weds, Thurs (and the usual jogging and/or bike riding for fun on the weekends). This gives me four in a row, and double-up potential on Mon and Weds in the future. I realize that saying this to, say, fit people whose body makes up their temple or their occupation (dancers, pro-boxers) might be laughable. But for a sedentary writer-type who'd rather be reading, it's not half bad.

As of this month, I've been working on fighting technique and upgrading my fitness level from "twenty minutes on the elliptical and some dinky free weights" to I WILL BECOME A SUPAH NINJAH for four months.

Not bad.

I'm having a good time.

Continuing Worklife... Yes, it Goes On

There really are people with jobs like this.

People who get paychecks for just... coming into work. I thought this was an illusion. It is not. I haven't really done any work since June.

My office space looks a bit like my college dorm room did, only the sticky notes affixed to my computer have vendors' names and addresses and project numbers instead of story notes. But here at my left elbow are 150 manuscript pages I'm revising, and a yellow notepad upon which I've got book pacing/layout notes for the stand-alone fantasy I'm working on for my next novel project. I've got a copy of Zelazny's Guns of Avalon sitting out (yes, yes, I'm only 2 chapters from the end - I keep getting interrupted by reading other things), and I've just cracked open a can of diet dr pepper and set it next to my stash of CDs. I'm listening to the soundtrack to The Hours. There's a packet of dried apricots here that have been stored in my outbox for the last week.

I'd like to think that this is my reward for doing all the admin. work for $12M worth of projects this year. Either my boss has forgotten to fire me (which is a possibility), or I'm viewed as such a valuable asset that they don't want to lay me off and risk losing me to another job just as they sign on for another project.

That's the great thing about being in a big firm: they have the resources to retain you and your writing habit.

Today's Mixed Bag of Goodness

So, here's what happening: is the President dumb, or is he just playing a dumb guy on TV? Aaron McGruder, the creator of the comic strip Boondocks, said out loud what no media pundit has dared to say. And check out Michael Moore's Letters From Iraq.

In other news, courts in Brazil ruled unanimously that same-sex couples had to be treated as married in matters of state: Brazillian law blocks the spouse and relatives of an elected official from succeeding them in office. There's gonna come a point when treating people as married *some* of the time and not *all* of the time is going to get pretty stale. Wake up, America. Also via Alas, A Blog - check out this discussion about the decriminalization of women involved in prostitution. What happens if you decriminalize the women and start agressively going over pimps and johns? If nobody *buys* something, there's no use selling it, right?

For those interested in the bubbling around Mt. St. Helens (I grew up in an area where you could see St. Helens from the surrounding hills), Jay Lake has been doing a Mountain watch. Want it live? Check out the Volcano Cam here, or get up-to-date info here.

Prepping for the Next Debate

Yes, chiklits, there's another debate tonight. Should be sunny!

For those who missed the Daily Show's wrap-up of the last debate, go be entertained here.

And now... here's your viewing guide for tonight, stolen shamelessly from World O' Crap:

THE BASICS

Vice President Cheney
5 feet 10 inches

North Carolina Sen. John Edwards
Height 6 feet

Strengths

CHENEY: Projects gravitas (i.e., oldness). Has held lots of government jobs. Commands an operational Death Star. Pact with Satan gave him unknown powers, plus a nice portfolio of Halliburton stock.

EDWARDS: Good looks, dazzling smile, great hair. Came from blue-collar background - uses it to show he identifes with problems of working people. Skilled orator. As a trial lawyer, knows Jedi mind tricks.

Weaknesses

CHENEY: Speaks in monotone. Looks like your grumpy jr. high principal. Responsible for quagmire in Iraq. Couldn't care less about jobs, insurance, old people, or what will happen to orphans after he forecloses on mortgage.

EDWARDS: Still serving first term in Senate - has never started a war, or been a wartime VP. Never killed a man just to watch him die -seems too nice to go for opponent's jugular. Not a member of the Trilateral Commission.

Track Record

CHENEY: In 2000 debate, some said he seemed less dour than Joe Lieberman. Had Democratic opponents in House races in Wyoming whacked; claims victory in those debates too.

EDWARDS: Seemed sunny, nice, likable during Democratic primary debates - all the pundits said so. Not used to debating while seated.

Task this Time

CHENEY: Push message that John Kerry is a francophile poofster whom the terrorists want to win so they can attack U.S. again and kill your children. Claim that Edwards lacks the experience and ruthlessness to kill Kerry and assume the presidency, if required.

EDWARDS: Goad Cheney into snarling "go f-- yourself", or "I'll get you yet my pretty; you and your war hero too!" Get him to make funny and/or scary faces for the camera. Make fun of his baldness in hopes he has heart incident. Bring up WMDs frequently, and aks him if HE knows that we were attacked by al Qaeda, not Saddam. Smile a lot.

Always Take The Batteries Out

Fellow travellers:

When discarding your sex toy at the airport, please remember to take the batteries out *before* you throw it away (I mean, come *on* this is vibrating sex toy 101, people).

Thank you.

via Bent Fabric

Saddam to Declare Candidacy for Iraqi Elections

Wouldn't this just be the perfect end to the perfect fuck-up?

Go democracy!

Ah, the WorkLife

Yellow just came into my office and dropped off some close-out documents. He set them down and burst into a rendition of Ice, Ice Baby.

I love working working here.

Oh, For Fuck's Sake.

Amanda over at Mousewords pointed me to this Today Show clip that is... downright laughable.

You know, I'm a year out of college, and I've never used the term "hook up." Amanda rants a lot better about this than I'm about to, so check out her rant here.

Yea, teenagers and young adults have sex. You know, like young people have always had sex, because, you know, it's fun, and it's hardwired. The difference between now and, say, the 60s and 70s is that now (because of AIDS) we're more likely to use condoms. You couldn't drink a beer in my college dorm without condoms springing up in abundance. In South Africa, you better bet everybody's getting it on - and you've never seen so much condom use (among the higher-end of the social heirarchy anyway) in your life. Sure, people are allowed to be more relaxed about sex in today's America - because women aren't forced or shamed into marrying the first guy they "hook up" with. And I agree with Amanda that what we're really talking about here is the "problem" of women who fuck around without "catching feelings." Fucking around without getting attached has practically been a definition of masculinity (and woe to those poor men who just want a "relationship") - it's cool that (I'm assuming, here) women feel empowered enough in their sexuality to choose when and with whom to sleep with and decide whether or not they're obliged to see more of him outside the buff.

Seeing these two "older" women (what, one's just past 30, the other's pushing past 40? C'mon, you guys, one of you grew up in the 80s, the other in the 60s, for fuck's sake - don't tell me teenagers never had sex "back in the good old days when we walked up hill both ways." That was yesterday, for goodness sake) discussing this topic so seriously in this clip sent me into giggles. Yea, right, haven't you guys been to college? How about high school? What's the difference between one-night-stands and serial dating? If all the two of you really want to do is hop into bed together, why go through a dating ritual for three months if it's already really clear that you're not compatable?

There's nothing so annoying as older people who totally blank out all memory of what it's like to have a libido. Frickin weirdos. It's the usual scenerio: sex among the unmarrieds is rampant and immoral, but the marrieds can have as much sex as they want with each other and in whatever random affairs they have, cause they're, you know, *married.*

Whatever.

Once More Around the Mulberry Bush

Was sick most of the weekend, which meant I stayed in bed and finished reading a bunch of books that I was reading concurrently. So, finished Kim Chernin's The Obsession, Nick Mamatas's Move Under Ground, and Sharon Shinn's The Shape Changer's Wife.

Short review would be a) old but base book about anorexia, half of which was interesting, the other half of which sort of waxed poetical about the female body. Not that I didn't appreciate that, mind you, but my own biases were getting the better of me, and I was getting ancy, as in "how much longer until this book is over?" ancy b) as for MUG, reading this book is like being on drugs. If you like that sort of thing, and you're a fan of Cthulu and/or Jack Kerouac, read this book. If not... well, this is an "acquired taste" sort of book c) and Shape Changer's Wife is a really great book, until you get to the epilogue. Which is crap. I'd forgotten that Sharon Shinn was a romance writer at heart... an American romance writer, where everybody needs to form chokeholds on each other at the end. So, read this, but if you're like me, skip the crappy romance-formula epilogue (which, I feel, undermined the entire point of the entire frickin' story. Ahem. But, that's me).

The Writing Life

Working on line edits the rest of today.

Also, I've started outlining a stand-alone fantasy novel about a female bounty hunter looking to get a lordship. She's going after the Queen's brother, who's killed their father, in a society of shapeshifting mages where non-magic users are considered a seriously deviant underclass. My Heroine is, of course, a deviant. There's guns, dodgy science, crude electicity, and lots of organic tech.

This being a Kameron novel, you can bet there's going to be sex, bugs, civil war, and women bathing their hair in the blood of their enemies.

Oh yeah.

Barring any great personal news, I'll see you all Monday.

Happy October!!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Hee Hee Hee

Just got a nibble from one of the NY agents.

The secret is to keep rewriting your query letter again, and again, and again. The more the query looks like the inside flap of a China Mieville novel, the better.

Seriously.

Sending 50 pages. Let's see what happens with *this* set...

Today's Alaska Pic

When I was 12 years old, I told my friends and family that I was going to go live in a little cabin in the woods in Alaska and write books. I ended up in Alaska a lot sooner than I thought I would. I bought a one-way ticket to Fairbanks (from Portland, OR) when I was 19. I'd never been there before.

What changed my the-next-80-years-in-Alaska mentality was going to Clarion. I was 20 years old, and I thought, "How can I settle on Alaska when I haven't really seen the rest of the world yet?"

Turns out, you can write books *anywhere.*

So this is my odyssey. See the rest of the world. And go. Back to Alaska.

Get myself a couple of dogs.

And a cabin overlooking the Kenai River. Yea.

Dept. of Public Good

I get nervous when I hear my boss on a conference call, talking about the 22 agencies in the Department of Homeland Security.

I really don't want to work on a project for those people (hello, DHS browsers!).

More Fighting. More Classes. Yeah!

Had a great class last night. I've managed to figure out how to get to my MA school in time for the 6:15pm class (leave work at 4:55 and catch the bus from the train to the school, instead of walking that mile-and-a-bit). So I lose some walking time, but gain the kick-ass 6:15 class that I was always walking in on after it already started, where I'd stand around warming up for my 7pm class and marvel at how everybody managed to keep up.

The 6:15 just rocks. It's a cardio and technique class, which basically means you're doing 2 min jump roping, then 2 min of rotating bag work (working a specific combo or kicking technique during each round), then 2 min jump roping, then a minute of abbs, then back to the bag.... You do this for 45 min. Most people then stay for the boxing class after that, which is the one I usually take on Weds.

I was really wowed at myself this time around. Is my technique perfect? No. Was I tired on the third round of jump rope? Oh yea. Did I feel, at some point, like I might die? Well, actually, no. Our last round was partnered situps where we'd pass medicine balls to our partners as we came up into a situp. I powered through it up until those last three reps, when I started losing steam. I was partnered with a purple belt, who nodded curtly when we were done. "You did good," she said.

It helps, of course, that I clock about 150 situps in my 20 minutes of free weights and stretching every damn morning.

It was the first time I'd done a class where I actually *felt* fit (again, comparing myself to myself and not to the people in the class who've been doing this four days a week for the last two or three or five years). I am not, in the words of my roomie, a Supah Ninjah - but after three months, I feel confident saying that I feel really powerful.

The funny thing is, this new upburst in strength and stamina (I felt I did really well during Monday's class as well), comes after a really slacker week. Last week, my boxing class got bumped for a "special" pilates class (to advertise the new Saturday instructor), and I not only didn't go jogging last week, I didn't even go bike riding. I halved my exercise time, but felt a big upsurge in stamina this week - exactly the opposite of what you'd think. There's something to the whole, "Down Time," thing.

I also went ahead and signed up for unlimited classes (I was on the 2-day-a-week schedule before). Starting next week, I'll be going in Mon, Tues, Weds, and Thurs.

Yes, I realize I told myself I wasn't going to do more than three times a week, but I figured saving my Saturday was worth tacking on another day during the week. Also, by taking the 6:15 class, it means I'm home before 8:30pm every night, so I do have some down time to eat dinner, prep for the next day, and read before bed.

Once I get comfortable with the four-days-a-week routine, I'm going to work at staying for the second class on Mondays and Wednesdays. But that's a ways down the road. We'll see how I hold up with back-to-back classes first.

Cause I Don't Have to Rant When I Post A Picture

via allhatnocattle.net

One For the Road

And, one for the road, because I should really be working on chapter 27 (yes, I'm STILL working on chapter 27):

Guys Pissed About Gender Roles

And, after being pissed at Brin, I have to point out some guys engaged in serious critiques of society and gender roles. Because, you know, we get too bogged down looking at extremes:

Here's an excellent guy-compiled list of male privilege. As a (white) man,

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

2. I can be confident that my co-workers won't think I got my job because of my sex — even though that might be true.

3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.

4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won't be seen as a black mark against my entire sex's capabilities.

5. The odds of my encountering sexual harassment on the job are so low as to be negligible.

6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.

7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are so low as to be negligible.

8. I am not taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces.

9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
.....
41. I am not expected to spend my entire life 20-40 pounds underweight.

42. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover.

43. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

And though I disagree with Hugo about some stuff, every once and a while he'll nail something for me:

The problem with the men's rights movement is that they confuse men's unhappiness with oppression. They assume that if men were in control, they would be happy, because patriarchal oppressors ought to be happy. Therefore, if a man isn't happy, he isn't oppressing. Newsflash, folks: Just because you don't know you're privileged doesn't mean you're not. Just because there are aspects of your power and privilege that you find alienating and burdensome doesn't mean that you are any less a beneficiary of an oppressive system! Both men and women do need liberation from rigid, traditional, gender roles. The difference is that collectively, men are the architects of the system while women are merely forced to live within it.

Does He Mean What I Think He Means?

First, a warning: This is slapdash.

Imagine me in the background, emitting a long scream as I frantically spit and type.

That's about how I felt reading this fucking thing.

Now, trying to be....

I'm trying to be, you know, really objective here. But does Brin mean what I think he means? Now, I'll be truthful, here. DB is on my shitlist, for wild talk of feminist cabals and a seemingly blinding confusion about why some feminists might find Glory Season offensive.

Do I disagree with everything he says here? Um. Not… quite… all. Am I addressing this article steeped in my own personal biases? You betch’a.

So, dip your toes in, but, in the words of the Secrete Feministe Cabal: Don’t Tell DB!

I've decided that I’m not going to be off-put by his article Neoteny and Two-Way Sexual Selection in Human Evolution: A Paleo-Anthropological Speculation on the Origins of Secondary-Sexual Traits, Male Nurturing and the Child as a Sexual Image. But hey, for the hell of it, let’s look at some of these winning arguments:

May we stipulate that women do often vie over men?

Sure. Of course. I’m not going to argue over this. And men often vie over women, as he mentions later. But for some reason, he seems more interested in the peculiar adornment of women. Understandable. It is indeed odd that in most of Today’s Societies women spend more than men on adornment (watch your numbers, fellas, as the media reach becomes ever more visual, you’re getting on board real quick. Plastic surgery, couture, and skin product sales among men are on the rise. Oh, wait, Brin’s arguing biology so these numbers must be wrong. After all – HUMAN WOMEN ARE HARDWIRED to read women’s magazines). If you continue reading this article, you’ll find that Brin seems to want to posit that this is a biological, unavoidable thing, and that all human societies work this way. Biologically speaking. Women naturally claw each other apart in search of “suitable mates.”

Huh?

If you ignore history, sociology, and anthropology, you can make really great arguments like this. This is why these are considered the “softer,” more “feminine” studies: not sciences, of course. Because they tell you that half of what you get often has to do with the set-up of the culture you’re raised in.

This really pisses people off. Particularly people who’ve got that Assumption of Privilege mantle.

In one contemporary society, the United States, nearly all of the most popular magazines for women trumpet articles advising their readers how to stay competitive in what is portrayed as a desperate struggle to find and keep a mate. American women spend many times more each year on cosmetics than the nation appropriates for space research. (If we add fashion, diet food, plastic surgery, and related activities, costs compare to the defense budget.)

I’m sorry: “women’s magazines”? Anyone who uses unnamed women’s magazines as research material shouldn’t have a Ph.D. They should have been kicked out of graduate school.

I'm consistently disappointed at how narrow-minded most spec. fic. writers are when it comes to theorizing about alternative family structures/gender roles (I include myself here, believe it or not – one of my Clarion compatriots once pointed out the “subtle misogyny” I’d unintentionally zipped into one of my stories – I was raised in this society, too). Maybe because many of the hard-core SF guys are 1) guys in a guy-affirming society 2) more interested in chemistry and biology than sociology, because it’s easier to use “hard” sciences to “prove” social Darwinism.

Le Guin's biggest strength is her background in anthropology and her interest in sociology (though I’m sure she’ll be the first to admit that she writes with her own biases, too). The reason you get some interesting stuff is cause she looks around not only at monkeys and elephant seals, but, you know, PEOPLE. Yes, Brin, she looks at PEOPLE, and the "different" (Read: non-American) societies they create. So you get the freer sexual practices in the Trobiand Islands, the property rights of women in the matrilocal Minangkaba culture, conceptions of androgyny and the ritual of taking on gender roles by aborigines in the Pacific, and societies where *men* make use of adornment and/or feats of skill and dancing (like, you know, all that makeup and plastic surgery in those "women's magazines") in isolated African and South American societies.

And, for the record, I prefer Russ to Le Guin. She’s more radical, and less read.

2 Granted, contemporary America is an extreme case,

No shit.

and even women in secure marriages work on their appearance for a complex of other cultural reasons. Still, no one can reasonably dispute that female humans often do engage in zero-sum contention over an apparently limited supply of suitable males....

“Limited supply of suitable males.” Dear god, what if we run out! What will women do? Heaven forbid they stop hating one another and work together and get really great-paying jobs and then maybe men might have to start adorning themselves to get any interest at all from women who find the idea of being talked down to really tiring. Gosh, what sort of strange society teaches women to hate themselves and each other and vie for male attention because men have (until recently here, and still, in some countries) property rights, access to higher-paying jobs, and more freedom of movement?

Oh, a heterosexist patriarchy. That’s right. Silly me. I forgot. I kept forgetting those examples of, you know, other HUMAN SOCIETIES that have DIFFERENT SEXUAL PRACTICES AND GENDER POLITICS than mine.

Right. Of course.

The presumption goes that human mothers need long-term, dependable partnership to help them carry big-brained, dependent children across the hazardous, exhausting stretch from embryo to maturity. And while some human societies have used brother-sister alliances to fill this need, or communal role-sharing, the majority have left mothers primarily dependent on continued loyalty and aid from the fathers of their children.

I totally agree. Women should have long-term, dependable partnerships in order to help them nurture and raise children.

Absolutely.

But instead of comparing societies where communal childraising works and ones that haven't, Brin’s talking about the necessity of male-female pair bonding in the raising of children. He's talking biology and making the arrangements of childrearing hardwired. He ignores societal difference and potential difference. Is there a biological disadvantage for groups of women to raise children? Or families and friends. Or groups of friends. He’s not even talking about two or three men getting together and agreeing to raise a female friend’s child.

Brin argues that the absence of male father-figures is wrecking the upbringing of children, that women with children who don't pair up with a man are more likely to live in poverty than those that do (I'm ahead of myself here - read the article, or scroll down the next big excerpt to see what I'm referring to here). Yes, this is true. But he's thinking inside the happy-hetero-pair bonding box that even Le Guin has been known to teeter about in (particularly in her earlier work). Women *do* need help raising children. Babies are born essentially helpless. It's difficult for women, in a society not created to support mothers, to raise children and support themselves at the same time.

But Brin puts this essential problem of single mothers and poverty on the shoulders of biology. He blames the inherent, biologically instinctual philandering of men, and the stupid women who irrationally “choose” to bear their children (better hope these same women have access to abortion/contraception and the ability to fight off the attention of men they’re not attracted to). Men just can't help it (don't men find this offensive?). They're naturally looking for lots of partners, and women are naturally just looking for one.

Naturally.

Right?

Um. Excuse me. Doesn't the average marriage last only 7 years in the US? I'd argue that most people are serially monogamous, which is much more biologically advantageous to both sexes. Do we have a lot of long-term friendships? You betcha. Do they all include sex? No. Do some? Sure.

And what's allowed for serial monogamy in women in the US this century is the advancement of women's rights. When women's sexuality is controlled, it's a lot easier to keep up the illusion that women only ever interested in having sex with one man (let alone a couple of women). Alpha Male Number One. Go Team Go. Using "women's magazines" to prove that all women in contemporary America are crazy about finding death-till-you-part male mates is just bad reasoning, lazy "research," and fucking offensive.

Oops, sorry. My claws are showing. Let me compose myself. Ahem.

To put this in perspective with nature at large, consider the extreme case of the elephant seal....

I still have problems with Brin using "women's magazines" as supporting research while comparing the mating habits of men and women to elephant seals. He uses the mating habits of other primates to compare those of contemporary American society. Don't get confused and think he's talking about any other society, because he's not. The only researcher he quotes at length is Hrdy, who has done some great work on primates, but she doesn’t study people. Just primates. But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here's Brin's solution for alleviating the poverty of single mothers in our contemporary society and aiding them in the raising of glorious offspring:

A better remedy might be to help women and girls learn to judge better -- to tell apart the various types of men -- and to distinguish a sincere promise from mere words aimed at an immediate end. In other words, use the tools of science to help young female Homo sapiens do what most females of other species do -- choose as well as they can, despite the complexities of modern context. For many, this could make the difference between a successful, happy life and eventual abandonment in poverty. Indeed, the pages of most women’s' magazines seem obsessed with exactly this effort -- floundering chaotically toward alchemical prescriptions for choice-directed happiness. This effort currently receives virtually no support from feminist intellectuals, who consider the approach ideologically anathema, holding that woman should not base her happiness on marriage or successful mate-choice, even though such success, when achieved, demonstrably leverages improved lives for women and children in all contexts and at all social levels, and furthermore that same success can be perfectly compatible with actualization in career and other areas of life. In other words, a woman who chooses a mate well is also more likely to succeed in areas beyond home and marriage.

The problem is: women are just fucking stupid.

Again, he doesn't give any stats to back any of this up except those still-unnamed "women's magazines."

Brin could have suggested that perhaps women - if socialized in a society that encouraged female cooperation instead of competition, and paid women and men equally for their labor - could form partnerships with one another and pool their resources and raise their children together with friends and family in a supportive network, with or without the aid of the man she had sex with. Instead, Brin says women should be more careful about who they're fucking.

Now, while I certainly believe in cautionary fucking, and while I refuse to carry to term a child who's got half the DNA of a total loser (and, ideally, I wouldn’t be fucking a total loser – but we’re forgetting that telling good people from psychos is a Charles Manson problem, and we’re completely ignoring forced and coercive sex), I'm reading in Brin's solution more of the "blame the woman because we've taught men that it's OK to split when they've spurted some semen" thing. And I see this so much that I get tired.

Is a woman who chooses a good mate more likely to succeed?

Sure.

Does it matter if that mate(s) is(are) male or female?

No.

People who have extensive social networks do better emotionally and financially than those who don’t.

Certainly we should put even greater effort into social conditioning, to try altering the ratio of "storks" to "reindeer" among human males. No doubt education can change the proportionate distribution of types. Unfortunately, those who expect a complete panacea out of socialization are likely to be disappointed. What good will it do to exhort boys not to act like elk, if they see elk-style men having success?

Read: boys are too smart to be socially conditioned!

Even if a program teaching girls to make wise choices were implemented and highly effective, there would still be a rub; for so long as the goal is "one man for each woman" the rules of a zero-sum game continue to apply. There will be winners and losers, and the spectacle of females fiercely competing for quality mates will continue.

To reiterate: women should be socially conditioned!

What bugs me here is “females fiercely competing for quality males.”

Basically, if you read the whole article, you’ll find that Brin argues that, like primates, men are all naturally philanderers. So really, if women just want some quality male sperm, that’s pretty easy to get. What women are apparently supposed to be competing over is a monogamous mate to help them raise said child.

Here’s my question: Why does it have to be the sperm donor who helps her raise her child? After all this talk of men and monkeys, Brin insists that it’s in women’s best interests to secure a mate.

But, why?

If women were equal, why would they HAVE to compete for a “quality male”? Can’t women have good friends of both sexes that help support her financially and emotionally? Why does it have to be a hetero guy?

If women are equal, if they make the same amount of money for the same work as men do, are allowed the same property rights, and etc. why would women have to rely on a live-in sexual partner?

In our society, men have to at least be financially responsible for the children they father because they’ll tend to take off and leave a woman without a social network to fall back on. It’s a problem with male socialization as much as it’s a problem with the US’s complete disinterest in supporting women.

The question Brin never asks is: what do men get out of monogamy? What do men get out of settling down with a “quality woman”? Anything? Any answers?

Sure, he says that maybe some guys will figure out that it’s more “biologically advantageous” to hang around and make sure your offspring survive into adolescents, but really, Brin’s look at human sexuality… ignores the humans.

Sex isn’t all about procreation. It’s not all about splitting DNA. Sex and touching among human beings is social. It helps create social networks. If a guy doesn’t secure himself a social network, he’s as dead in the water as a woman without a social network.

Depression and suicide rates go down for married men. Married men live longer. They have more sex. The reason men get pissed of when women “use” them as fuckbuddies is because it messes with their conception of the sexual paradigm: she’s supposed to need you, not the other way around. It’s not “just” sex men get out of sexual encounters. Any guy who tells you that is selling something. It’s about being looked at with affection, feeling needed and appreciated, and touching another human being. If it was really all about the orgasm, we’d all sit around alone in bed and stop calling each other.

Articles like Brin’s bug me because they ask stupid questions. I read an interview with Hrdy when she was asked about what the biggest difference was between male and female scientists. She said there really wasn’t one: except in the sorts of questions they asked. She and a friend were sitting with a couple of male colleagues, and one of the men said, “We should do a study to find out if women are more interested in sex in the days before menstruation.”

Hrdy and her female colleague looked at each other and laughed. They didn’t need to know “if.” They wanted to know “Why?”

Guys like Brin ask: what can women do so that children in this society are raised better?

They don’t ask: what can society do to enable the best possible environment for children to be raised in?

Guys like Brin ask: What’s the biological reason that a human female generally has to compete with other women to get a mate?

They don’t ask: How is society enabling hetero men in pursing their choice of mate, and teaching men that their desires supercede those of their intended, justifying actions such as rape and coercive sex?

Guys like Brin ask: Why are women using women’s magazines as aids in beautifying themselves for competing against each other for quality mates?

They don’t ask: Why aren’t more men striving to be quality mates?

There’s an assumption of audience going on in these old-white-guy hard science papers that’s off-putting.

When was the last time Brin listened to a woman instead of standing around in a crowded room talking about himself? (in this instance, I speak from personal experience, standing in a room with Brin)

Tripe like this bugs me.

Good Things

Bridget Jones is back.

And... a total Kameron movie: theatre, genderbending, and illicit sex.

Living Vicariously

I know a lot of travelers like this.

War. Booze. And Unrequited Love. ::snicker::

"You must remember this, a kiss is still a
kiss". Your romance is Casablanca. A
classic story of love in trying times, chock
full of both cynicism and hope. You obviously
believe in true love, but you're also
constantly aware of practicality and societal
expectations. That's not always fun, but at
least it's realistic. Try not to let the Nazis
get you down too much.


What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life?
brought to you by Quizilla


War, Booze, and Impossible/Unrequited Love. Doesn't get much better than that!

Calm Before

Fall is my favorite time of year. All those pumpkins, falling leaves, coat weather, dry and sunny days. I pick up my pumpkin on Saturday.

A Softer World

I love this guy. He oozes cynicism.

Check out:

Political Assasin
Robot Boyfriends
Abortion Party
Zombies
Robot Wife
Terrorist Cell

Stuff That Pisses Me Off

If America were Iraq, what would it look like? This is great.

And, from the Guardian: "Poll Giving Kerry Lead Stirs Controversy." Funny, how it's only the polls that give *Kerry* a lead that stir up controversy, huh?

And, you gotta give props to Southern Africa:

MANZINI, Swaziland - Bus conductors in Swaziland vowed on Friday to assault and rape female passengers who wore miniskirts, sparking outrage among women’s groups in the conservative African kingdom.

“We will teach these women respect. We will fix them with our brush handles,” Simon Ndwandwe, a bus conductor from Manzini, said at the bus rank on Friday.

A bus conductor calling himself only Licandza said: “Women who wear miniskirts want to be raped, and we will give them what they want.”

What I love about stories like the above is the bullshit factor. All those skimpy skirts - those men just couldn't contain themselves. Men are such uncivilized animals that they can't contain their lustful urges when staring a woman's legs. Oh, don't feed me this bullshit. It's not only insulting to women, it's insulting to *men*. Call it what it is: asserting male power over women so that men can feel better about themselves. And if you think rape is "no big deal" (something tells me that the sort of guys who say that wouldn't be so quick if asked whether or not they thought being gang-sodomized was their idea of a great time) consider this: the HIV/AIDS infection rate in Swaziland is 38.6% - the highest in the world next to Botswana, who gets the prize with 38.8%.

What always interests me with these gang rape cases, as well, is that many men actually find that they can't get physically aroused, so they end up using things like the above (broom handles) or bottles or something else lying around to assault a woman. I've read of this happening in Vietnam as well, when US soldiers felt that they had to participate in gang rape in order to seem like "one of the guys." The problem was, they really didn't get off on it at all, and couldn't "perform." It's not about the sex. It's not about feeling lustful cause you can see a woman's legs.

Anyone who says it is is lying.

Snapshots From My Worklife, 4

Going out to lunch with the guys is always a fun affair.

It doesn't happen often, as I'm a woman and a glorified admin., but when it does, I have a good time. Last week I went out with Yellow, Blaine, Dee and Jose (one of the architects). We went out to this italian deli (their favorite spot), where we got these olive-oil soaked sausage rolls heaped in cheese and jalapeno peppers. They came in 6in, 9in, and 15in sizes. Blaine, being the ex-football star, got the 15in. The others not only ate 9in subs, but opened up a couple bags of chips, and we all chowed down while Blaine and Yellow and Dee gossiped about all the other guys in the office and talked about how incompetent they were.

I was sitting there with my own 6in oil-soaked sub (which I actually didn't even finish), enjoying the nice full, heavy feeling of eating a greasy spoon meal, and watching these guys eat. It was weird. I imagined sitting at a table here with a bunch of women, and watching them eat this stuff with such reckless abandon. It's something you just wouldn't see unless they were, maybe, a group of truck drivers, or very young. When you see women out together, they're like as not either eating salads or splitting dishes with one another.

Nobody's ordering a 15in sub.

It's not like these guys are skinny. They're all pushing middle-age (Yellow's the youngest, at 33), and every year after 25, the average person gains half a pound of fat and loses half a pound of muscle as the metabolism decreases. Again, this isn't "all," just "average." So these are big guys I'm sitting around eating with, and being there, just... eating, and watching people eat without reserve was sort of... well, it was different. It made me realize how little I hang out with guys anymore (my friendship circle in Alaska was almost exclusively male).

Here I was sitting with guys who were about my size (Dee, Jose, and Yellow are either my height or within an inch or two, and though Yellow pretends to be in good shape, he's got a little pot belly he likes to hide by wearing baggy flannel shirts - women aren't the only ones with image problems, I suppose, but I doubt that pot belly keeps him up at night), and I suspect that only Blaine weighs significantly more than I do, like, by 20lbs or so (Dee and Yellow might weigh a little less than me, but again, not by more than 20lbs or so).

It was the first time I didn't wish I was any smaller. I felt totally average. I liked feeling like these guys were physically my equals - if not in terms of upper body strength, then in terms of mass.

And I thought - why do I still have to feel the female compulsion to be smaller, when it's so obvious that I'm not and never will be anything close to the 5'4, 140lb female average? I want to eat the occasional sausage roll, subsist mainly on eggs and meat and mixed vegetables, and not feel guilty when I go out for Chinese food on Fridays. I just couldn't imagine any of these guys ever feeling bad for eating Chinese food. Why? Because women are supposed to be more forgiving in their assessment of datable men (the guys in my office are overwhelmingly hetero)? Because men are *supposed* to be big? Supposed to take up more space? Be stronger? Be stronger than what, exactly? Why are women who're the same size as guys so scary?
Ha. My worklife.

Fighting & Stuff

Had a good class last night. It was the second "special class" of the month, that is, our usual scheduled programming was replaced by Muay Thai. It was fun, and I had a great partner. She was a frickin' Amazon (5'10 about 190lbs), and after assuring me I wasn't going to hurt her, I pumped up the amount of power I was using in our headlocks and knee strikes, and when we broke, she was hopping up and down and grinning, "We're both really strong!" she said, "This is great!"

So, we kicked the crap out of each other, and I suspect I've got some bruises. It was great.

In any case, I've also found that the monetary difference between "unlimited classes" and "two days a week" for our MA school is $24. For some reason I had a whole other set of monetary increments in my head. I'm definately switching to full-time classes next month.

What Men Want?

Hugo's got an interesting discussion going over at his blog about men's expectations of women's compulsorary smiling, cheerfulness, when men walk around the room.

Check it out.

Here's my response:


I'd agree that, as a woman, you're likely going to measure your smiling/friendliness level depending on how comfortable you feel in a given location (and likely how old you are). I'd also agree that, as a woman, you learn very quickly to gauge your behavior based on the level of threat you feel. Is that right? Does it suck? Sure. But we do it. Because that's how you survive.

When I lived in the NW and later, Alaska, I didn't pay much attention to the "smile" comments (I get these a lot - I'm not a naturally friendly person, and I'm stuck in serious thought more often than not). Most of the "hi"s and "smile"s from Fairbanksans were friendly: men (and women) said hello and passed on by, without demanding any more conversation if I didn't start one; no one followed me, or men sexual invitations. After a time, I became much more relaxed and laid back, to the point where I'd actually take rides with strangers and fine-tuned my "radar" so that I'd take the occasional chance going somewhere alone with a pseudo-stranger. I just didn't find men all that scary. And I had complete trust in my neighbors. If the shit went down, I knew I could count on the vast majority of friendly strangers for help.

Then I moved to a big city. It started while I was overseas, in Durban, South Africa, and I was suddenly being cat-called at, followed, and grabbed at by random passersby. I stopped making eye contact, stopped smiling at strangers, and managed to get these male intrusions on my personal space down to 2-3 a week.

If you think that's just a foreign country thing, wait: then I moved to Chicago. I spend 15 hours a week on the train. The great equalizer. Now I'll get the drunken, "You're very beautiful. Did you HEAR ME? DID YOU HEAR ME??" "Nice peice of ass!" and "Smile!" only once or twice a week. And I do better than most - I'm not little and blond. Not being the cultural ideal of "attractive" you'd think I'd not get harrassed at all, right?

Ha. It's about power.

Age likely has something to do with it as well. I'm still youngish (24). What happens in big cities more often than not (and I can tell you this from experience) is that saying "hello" back to random strange men on the street who say hello will get you 1) followed 2) yelled at, as they attempt to prolong the conversation as they follow you.

Strange men who follow you are scary. Why? Do you watch the news? Do you see the spray of mangled, mutilated female bodies thrust in front of us? Lori Peterson? All the women Manson killed? What about television? What's the proportion of female murder victims to male murder victims on our tv shows and on the news?

My roommate is 5'2, 120lbs. She's from California, and spent her first couple years here in Chicago living in Evanston. When I got here, we moved closer to downtown. She was walking around the corner to pick up videos around this time last year, and passed by a guy coming out of the store. She raised her head as she passed, and smiled, merely acknowledging another person passing her. *HE TURNED AROUND* and *FOLLOWED HER BACK INTO THE VIDEO STORE*. He proceeded to try and make conversation with her. She kept blowing him off. He kept trying to talk. Increasingly agitated, she bundled up her rentals and sped to the exit. *The guy continued to follow her.* As he approached the exit, the woman at the counter called him back (bless her heart), and insisted there were several things she needed to speak with him about regarding his account.

When my buddy got home, she called the woman at the counter to thank her. "Thank goodness you called," the woman said. "I stalled him as long as I could, but when he looked up and saw you were gone, he started swearing and ran out the door. I was seriously hoping you were all right."

My buddy got lucky. It's the only time I've ever encountered anyone in Chicago who stood up for a stranger being harrassed.

That's the worst of the Chicago stories (there are many, many more), but I have a lot of Durban stories too (including an incident at a busstop when two men came up to the thin blond girl next to me and started threatening her with all of the sexual things they were going to do to her, and I turned around and started cussing and screaming at them and telling them they were violating our right to stand there in peace. They were so shocked they just stood there silently for a few moments and then wandered away. "Thanks," the girl told me afterward, "I'm always afraid of standing up for myself because I'm afraid I'm going to get knifed." I was afraid of getting knifed, too), and let me tell you - after that incident at the rental store, my buddy is a lot more careful about who she's friendly with while walking down the street alone.

These are survival tactics. Anybody who says otherwise hasn't lived as a woman in a big city, walking around alone (and in Durban, one *never* walked around at night without a male escort. You just didn't, unless you had a BIG group of women. The rape rate there is 1 in 3).

Is this every woman's experience?

No (obviously, as this little sample has illustrated), likely because of age or geography, women will have different experiences, just as men will have different experiences of interacting with women on the street. What I resent is men's assumption that they have some sort of right to be treated better than anyone else. I don't smile much at women, either.

Is it sexism, to not be friendly to a guy? Do I violate his civil rights by not smiling when he asks it of me? Do I physically abuse him by not saying "hello"? Would anyone ask a *guy* this?

When asked what they fear most about the opposite sex, women will say, "Being raped and/or beaten or killed." Men will say, "Being laughed at."

It says a lot about the rift between most male and female experience, to see those two reactions next to each other. You can sort of see them colliding here as well.

Do men (or women) violate my right to privacy by demanding that I interact with them? I'd argue that yes, they do. You can't force me to interact with you. That's assumption of privilege: believing that the world owes you something.

Women have a right to protect themselves. Scarily enough, that often means being very, very picky about who you're friendly with when you're alone. The legal system is against you.

Should it be that way? Should I be "allowed" to be friendly with whomever I want, without fear of being followed home by some psycho? Sure. That would be great. It would be great to walk down Lawrence in a skimpy skirt at 1am, all by myself, and not worry 1) that I'll be attacked 2) that if I survive said attack and am raped/beaten/mutilated, that the judge won't blame *me* because I was in a skirt at 1am on Lawrence.

There have been a lot of studies done about how many people will "help" you if you're assaulted or verbally abused in a big city. 99% of the time, NO ONE WILL HELP YOU. Or, they'll wait until you're being beaten or raped, and then maybe somebody might slow down and consider what they should do. Maybe.

Why was I so nice in Alaska? Why did I feel so safe?

I opened up the local paper one day to find that a woman who'd flown into Fairbanks for business had been grabbed and pulled into the woods along the road.

THREE CARS STOPPED IMMEDIATELY. One woman grabbed a rifle from the gunrack of her truck, and two men chased down the jogger's attacker before he even managed to wrestle the jogger to the ground. He fled into the woods, and within 20 minutes, there were helicopters searching the area for the attacker.

No offense to Durban or Chicago, but I just don't trust the people here to react in that kind of way. I'm on my own.

I think that if men want to live in a friendlier society, they should take more steps toward eliminating the harrassment of women (Hugo's points here are very valid) in their own peer groups, standing up when someone is verbally or physically harrassed, and refraining from such harrassment themselves.

It's not sexist to not smile at men any more than it's sexist to not smile at women. It's my right.

That said, I think you'll find that everyone is a lot more laid back when they feel safer. And I think a lot of men would be really surprised to realize just how many women walk around hyper-aware of their surroundings and assessing how dangerous the people around them are (particularly the men - we're working on statistics and personal experiences).

If guys want to help change that, go for it - teach other guys how not to be assholes. Evaluate your own behavior. Talk to your female friends about it. Don't get stuck here being pissed off because you feel like it's tougher to get laid because random female strangers won't smile at you. Get over it. Try looking over the fence. You'll find a whole other set of experiences over there. Some of them might actually freak you out.