On Being A Professional Pirate

I've been paying particular attention to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster case on whether or not file-swapping services are at fault if their users decide to download copyrighted files. Same thing VCR manufacturers had to go through ages ago. And Grokster should continue to get the same verdict that the VCR manufacturers got.

It's all about being a professional pirate.

As someone who knows a number of professional pirates, that small group of people who haven't had to pay for a CD in several years and have a tetrabyte of computer space loaded with everything from feature-length first-run movies to porn, I can tell you that they're largely a very fair group of people. They've downloaded Bioware's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and had such an incredible respect for the game that most of them went out and bought it.

I've been file swapping for years. It's how I discovered Ani DeFranco, Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Paul Westerberg, The Secret Machines. I got a hold of a handful of tracks from each, then went out to grab a CD or two or three.

In fact, the only artists who have to "worry" about file swapping are the crappy ones. The ones who put out entire albums that only have one snappy radio song that gets so much play that you figure you'll listen to it until you get sick of it and then delete it. Highly combustible. So you grab your sticky pop crap from Ashlee Simpson or Britney Spears. Repeat until sick, then never listen to again. These are the sorts of people who should really only be making money from touring anyway. They're entertainers, not singers, not artists.

As a writer, I used to be a violent defender of copyright. I was of the Harlan Ellison school of copyright: don't steal my stuff, you bitches! Don't post it anywhere! Don't give it your friends! Squeeze out every dime!

My view changed in South Africa, when I realized that music, books, media, wasn't cheap. And what that meant was that 80% of the population of an entire country was pretty much denied access to 80% of that country's media, and the media of the world. And all of the thoughts, ideas, and feelings those media contained.

And I saw that as doing the world a vast, vast disservice. Reserving all the knowledge in the world for a handful of elite.

In fact, this is why India doesn't really have copyright laws. China loves to steal stuff all the time. The idea is that by putting a monetary value to thoughts and ideas, you're limiting the dissemenation of those ideas. It's like education: it should be free for all.

However, all that said, I'm very clear on one point: if somebody reposts something of mine; a short story, blog entries, I want them credited to me, and I don't want that person making money off my words. That's it. That's my only rule. Swap my stuff around like crazy. That's why it's here. But you better not be selling pamphlets full of it without my permission, and you better not be saying you wrote it. That's a matter of politeness. It's just rude to steal shit and claim it's yours. Basic English 101 stuff.

As a writer, I think, your ultimate goal is audience. Do I want to make money writing? Do I want to get paid for it? Would I love a book contract that would pay off my student loans and pay for grad school? You fucking bet I do.

But I will not jealously hoard ideas. I will not demand that everybody at LJ pay me money for quoting my posts or stories in their entirety. In fact, my deepest thrill yesterday was backtracking to those LJs where they'd included huge excerpts or entire posts and as I'd scroll through them I'd go, "Wow. This is really well written. Whoever wrote this... oh, shit, that was *me*."

I love the internet. I love that it allows for the free flow of information and ideas. Yea, sure, it ends up being a little bit like the game "telephone," when you put it "Lucy likes little trucks with lots of ducks," and it came out, "Oh, fuck," at the other end.

But there's something incredibly powerful about reaching a thousand people (or ten thousand or ten million) freely. If you're any good, you can find a way to support yourself that way, as many writers and bloggers do, either by selling their books and stories via their blog, or fundraising for site upkeep.

And when you talk about swapping music, movies... The Lord of the Rings was not harmed in any way by file swapping. Those pirates who have the whole version on their computer with the 1 tetrabyte of space have also bought all three of the extended editions of the film.

What file swapping forces the media to do is be better. It makes their art worth paying for. I just put down $30 for Catherynne Valente's The Labyrinth, and $30 for Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell. And not only did I pay to buy Good People Who Love Bad News, but Jenn picked up her own copy as well... even though we'd all but collected the entirety of the album through other means.

When shit is really fucking good, you'll put down the money for it.

When it's not... well, those are the people who are really, really worried right now.

Kisses for Jason

Cheeky guy.

This is Good

I know it's the way I approach a lot of my posts. Good to think about. Human beings aren't all about logic, really. We kick straight from the gut.

Take the issues out of the clouds, and put them back in the bloody field where real people are dying.

From the Salon piece:

With the Republicans in charge, it now becomes the work of the left to frame the social issues it wants to influence -- for example, homophobia, racism, war and xenophobia -- by telling stories that are easy to relate to and enable people (of all kinds) to root for the oppressed, the wounded and the underdog. This "Oprah approach" -- giving people an immediate connection to social issues by making them personal -- can change people's minds about deeply held beliefs.

These stories -- unlike those that the right crafts, such as the embellished tale of Iraq veteran Jessica Lynch, or the Swift Boat group's attack ads about John Kerry's Vietnam service -- don't need to be manipulated or created. They exist already. Progressives just need to be willing to tell them, and by doing so express which core values they think people need to hold on to and which ones they must discard and replace with new values.

Francesca Myman

I'd like to point you all to one of my fellow Clarion buddies, Francesca Myman, a Yale grad, fantasy writer, and artist whose website I just recently picked up (I fell out of touch with about half of the class, so it's cool to see she's doing well).

She's got fun photos, a lovely art gallery, and check out Broadband (not really work safe), images of fleshy women in classic art. A good reminder about how much standards of female beauty change - though I'd hasten to add that these images felt just as totalitarian and impossible to achieve and maintain by women then as standards today. The "ideal" is only an "ideal" if less than 2% of the population achieves it. Then it changes. So it goes.

Great stuff.

Welcome

Damn, you LJers are gonna double my hit count again today.

Welcome, welcome. Good to have you here.

Why the Women's Movement "Doesn't Work?": Cause We're Not Talking Enough About Women?

I just got a form letter from Naral Pro-Choice America (which I assume was forwarded to many feminist bloggers, and all of those at the aggregate I belong to) asking if I'd post about their Give Us Real Choices campaign against "Chastity Week," a "campaign" launched by the Pennsylvania State Legislature promoting chastity as a means of curtailing the unintended pregnancies of women.

NARAL is great, and I applaud their work, but I found something off-putting about the idea of sending a letter to the legislature asking for a chastity belt as a form of protest (not that I think you shouldn't go over there and sign it. Do. It's all we've got right now). This mostly bugged me because I've gotten to the point where I could see that legislature budgeting in "requested chastity belts" as part of Chastity Awareness Week. Or, at least "Chastity Rings" that libido-less young women would wear in honor of their marriage to their hymen.

I can see them doing shit like this. We've gotten to the point where we're dealing with people who have no sense of irony.

NARAL has done some great stuff, and I like that they've got up the Faces of Pro-Choice America up at their site. It's really cool. But there's something missing from this fight.

In Denver, while waiting for my cab, I saw Kate Michaelman, former President of NARAL, in a back-and-forth spot with the "news" anchor about how important it was to keep the Democratic party pro-choice. Kate's contemporaries apparently told her they wanted to see her run for the DNC chair. She thought about it, but ultimately declined. Didn't decline the post. Declined the idea of even being in the running for the post.

Now, I greatly respect this woman, I think she's amazing, but when the pictures came up of the six men running for the post, the interviewer said, "Isn't it odd that this is such a hotly contested issue as far as the chair is concerned, but not one of the people up for the DNC chair is a woman?"

Kate went on to explain her reasons for not pursuing the chair. She had good reasons. I respect her.

And yet... and yet...

If you don't stand up, who will?

It's something I realized while watching Kate. I wanted to like her. I wanted to get behind her and march to the steps of the Supreme Court. But in that hesitancy to step up, when so many women asked her to, I saw cowardice. Rational, logical, cowardice, but cowardice nonetheless. She was afraid.

She knew exactly what would become of her and her family if she did so.

The women's movement does not have a voice, because it has no leader. There are no particular people to rally behind, nobody I would follow to the ends of the earth. There's no talking head to pit against Ann Coulter who's actually charistmatic - and, let's be honest, this is America - and pretty enough to do it on CNN.

Because it would take an amazing fucking woman to be that leader. To be the Oprah of the women's movement. Because she'd need to be charismatic, passionate, traditionally good-looking (it's true, don't pretend it's not), and above all else (because we do have those women. Hillary can fake it, Barbara Boxer is a pistol), above all else, she would have to risk. She would risk not only her own life, but the lives of those she loved. Because being the head of a women's movement would mean endless derision, endless tasteless cartoon strips, endless death threats from psychos throughout the country and likely around the world. Her sex life, her mental health, her weight, her clothes, the cut of her hair, the size of her shoes, would all be public topics of discussion. Nothing she had would be hers. She'd have to be one tough fucking cookie, because it's possible for all that she was to be consumed by the media, by the women around her, by the courts.

What you're talking about is finding somebody who would fight, and who possessed all of those media-lovin'-looks-and-graces that get them on television.

And that's a tough woman to find. And I think there's a lack of forward motion, of progress, in the movement because we really have no voice, no one person who says, "I've talked to women around the country. We want different things, but there are issues we're not divided on. Especially the issue of personhood. We demand the right to be real people."

And what I worry about, especially, is that "the women's movement" and "women's rights" are becoming so narrowly focused on abortion. Yes, I've already ranted about why that's a core issue. But in all our talk about fetal rights, lack of rights, giving rights, the pro-choice women, too, are forgetting that we got into this because of the women.

We're being forced into a debate at when "life" begins, instead of speaking about women who are alive. Women who want jobs. Who want to leave their abusive spouses. Who feel their desires crushed my family, by religion. Women who want decent childcare so they don't bust their asses for pennies and come home to put in another 40 hours.

And with no one actually speaking for women, by not forcing the wackos to speak our language, we've started making concessions. We've gotten scared. We've backed down.

They have used violence to alter the debate. Used the language of "life" to erase "women," and we have no one to put in front of them. Instead, we have this massive, howling hoard of pissed-off women with nowhere to vent their rage but in our wit and irony - irony increasingly lost on an increasingly conservative, backwards bunch of politicians who are so eager to please, so eager not to spark any controversy at all, that they will kow-tow to the first man who torches an abortion clinic, instead of charging him as a terrorist and hauling him off to Cuba.

I want to change the language. I want children created of a woman's body, not in it. Forced labor is slavery. If they want outlandish, hard-hitting language, I will give it to them.

Sometimes, when the other side is screaming outrageous obsenities, you've got to frame your argument just as violently, as forcefully, as they do. And you have to frame it in your own terms. I don't think we should talk in nice, cozy, "abortion is just terrible" terms anymore. I think we should reframe the debate.

I think we should talk about slavery, about filling vessels, about women as chattle.

I think that's a language they'll understand.

And I wish a woman would step up to do it.

And my sentiment on my own candidacy for the post (I knew some of you would go there) is likely that of Eleanor Roosevelt, who, when asked what her one regret in life was, replied:

"I wish I'd been prettier."

Yet, how long can we bitch and moan and write letters and complain and scream before we have to step up? Before we have to be brave? Before we say, "I believe in this. I will fight for this" and do it no matter how pretty, no matter how uncharismatic, because so many women are so fearful of that public shame, of being the hated public woman, the voice of millions of women, speaking violently, passionately, about where the small steps lead us, about how we are treading water in a current rapidly pulling us out to sea?

I'm Paying Money for This Shit?

Via feministing:

Here's some sample "advice" being given out to today's teens in those abstinence-only sex-ed programs that my tax dollars are going toward. Here's my problem: this "advice" not only goes against my personal values, but encourages male hatred toward women, female passivity and the squelching of desire, and worst of all - presents lies, statements with no basis of "fact" as being "true."

“Because they generally become aroused less easily, females are in a good position to help young men learn balance in relationships by keeping intimacy in perspective.” Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p.6.

See here, now.

“THERE IS NO WAY TO HAVE PREMARITAL SEX WITHOUT HURTING SOMEONE.” Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p.35

Wow. I must have been doing something wrong.

“A young man’s natural desire for sex is already strong due to testosterone... females are becoming culturally conditioned to fantasize about sex as well.” Sex Respect, Student Workbook, p. 6.

When men were "men" but women were... females. Just like on Animal Planet! Before the year 1900, women didn't think about sex at all, in any country! Damned if I know why any of us are here.

"Good writing tells you a lot about yourself. Bad writing tells you a lot about the author." - anon

“A woman is stimulated more by touch and romantic words. She is far more attracted by a man’s personality while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.” WAIT Training, Workshop Manual, p. 40.

::cough:: ::cough:: Long-term relationship? Oh, definately, personality. Quick fuck out back? Oh, you better bet he's hot and I haven't been giving much thought to what comes out of his mouth. In fact, in order for the fantasy to continue, he best not speak at all. It would ruin the illusion.

“What if a girl came to school in a crop top, just barely covering her bra, and shorts starting three inches below her naval? What ‘game’ would she be playing?” WAIT Training, Workshop Manual, p. 86.

The correct answer is D) The Please Come Rape Me! game.

Obviously.

I'm sorry, you chose A) It was 90 degrees outside, it was hot, and most of the boys got to run around on the football field without shirts on? Well, tough luck for you, you're wrong, wrong wrong. Women don't even perspire! Comfort! Freedom! ha.

“How can girls make guys feel esteemed and admired for choosing the wise course?” Facing Reality, Student Manual, p. 30.

Face Reality, Ladies. Sex is all about men. You shouldn't even *like* it. Get back in the kitchen.

Fucktards.

Some Thoughts On Faith

My father was raised Catholic. Catholicism is why his mother had five children (my favorite story of my paternal grandparents' marriage: when she went into labor for the fourth time in order to deliver my father - having given birth to three girls previously - and they were wheeling her into the delivery room, my grandfather took her hand and said, "If you have another girl, I'm going to divorce you." Seriously).

My mother went to a Catholic school, briefly, though I'm under the impression, for some reason, that most of her family was Protestant. Or, perhaps, Presbyterian. Says a lot about my knowledge of the Christian denominations that I honestly can't remember.

On those weekends when my parents worked or just needed some time to themselves, my grandmother would get us up early on Sunday mornings and meticulously dress my sister and I in proper good-girl attire (I remember being, what, 3 or 4, and standing on top of the toilet lid while my grandmother prepared to dress me. I was holding a towel around myself, and when she brought the clothes up, I let the towel drop, in anticipation of being dressed. She cried out, scandalously, "Modesty! Modesty!" I thought she was very funny. Ah, Catholicism). I remember the church because there were good feelings associated with it. She'd bring coloring books and crayons for us to amuse ourselves with while whoever it was preaching was preaching, and afterwards, my grandmother would talk to lots of people and enjoy herself. It was a social club, so far as I could see, and people seemed very nice to each other.

As far as God goes, I believed in "God" just like I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. And I don't say that to be condescending. I actually believed - with all my heart - in the existence of Santa Claus until I was, like, twelve years old - longer than I kept up a belief in God. The existence of Santa Claus, to my mind, was much "realer" than that of God. Santa was everywhere. He was at the mall. They made tons of movies about him. I left cookies and milk for him that were eaten the next day. He left presents. I was convinced that I heard him and his reindeer on the roof on many occasions.

But God? Well, I read my grandmother's copy of The Children's Bible from cover to cover. They had some seriously great stories in there. Really awesome. All that war and violence. I loved them. But then God would speak out of the air or decide a battle or something and I was like, "That doesn't happen to me." And then people would do things that God said, and I was like, "Wow, that would sure make life easier."

But God never told me what to do. Jesus wasn't really much in the discussion, so much as I remembered (most of the Bible stories I read were Old Testament). It was all about God, and God was kind of a mean guy, and he told people to do some really weird, contradictory things in order to prove their loyalty to him, like kill their own kids and have sex with their fathers, and after a while, I started to think he was kind of an asshole.

I remember having a conversation in, like the third grade with my buddy Matt. Matt's dad was a scientist. He did work with cross-breeding stawberry plants, which took him to places like Peru (he came to school and gave a slide show presentation of his time in Peru, the people, the poverty, the landscape. It made a deep impression. When he showed the slide of him and his guy buddies in some offroad Peruvian location, leaping up in the air behind their Toyota truck [riffing on a popular Toyota truck ad at the time] and said, "This is our version of a Toyota truck commericial," I was like, "I want to have a life like *that*."), and he was also deeply, deeply committed to Christianity. Matt's family were what I would term "real" Christians. They were nice to everybody. They practiced what they preached.

But one day Matt and I talked about the existence of God, which I was actually pretty dubious about by that point. I hadn't seen any God-like manifestations. I hadn't been struck down when I was bad. I thought it was more likely Santa would put coal in my stocking if I was bad than God strike me down. Seriously.

And he said, "I asked my dad last night, if God made the world, and Adam and Eve, and all of the animals, then why do we have dinosaur fossils that are older than people?"

"Yea," I said, "that seems kind of weird."

"Well," he said, "my dad said that God did that to sort of test the world before he made people. You know, to make sure everything worked. But the dinosaurs weren't really what he wanted, so he started over."

"Isn't that like saying that God made a mistake?" I said. "If God knew everything, why would he have to run an experiment?"

"Maybe God was a scientist," Matt said (or something to that effect).

What I love about these memories of my conversations with Matt are watching us (and especially him), trying to come to grips with the contradictions between acknowledged, provable "truth" about the way the world works, and how the world is supposed to work and be according to a set of beliefs. It's something I've watched many of my passionately faithful friends do for years.

One of my Mormon buddies recently met and befriended the first openly gay guy she'd ever encountered (in fact, she'd "met" many more gay men and likely a few lesbians and many, many bisexual women in the high school theater, but this was the first time somebody actually "admitted" and discussed their attractions with her). He was Mormon as well, and hearing her speak about him fascinated me. She had this sort of pained note in her voice, this truly confounded expression on her face.

"I just don't understand," she said. "He knows what he does is wrong. He knows it goes against God, it's wrong. But he's still that way. I just... I don't understand."

And my heart bled for her, and bled for him, and what I wanted to say to her was, "If he could change, don't you think he would? He knows that being loved and accepted means being attracted to women and not attracted to men. He knows that's the only way to be, to be loved. If he could change, he would. There's a generation of women and men growing up hating themselves. A generation of people who'd rather commit the `sin' of suicide than find an ounce of happiness is the arms of somebody they love and desire. Don't you think that's fucked up? Do you think that's what Jesus [I wasn't even going to ask about Smith] really wanted? Us hating ourselves and each other?"

Instead, to quell what would become a huge, awful debate, I said, "Well, your ideas and mine are very different about this issue."

How I came to have an issue with organized faith, and Christianity in particular, was being threatened and pressed to conversion by those I grew up with. The aforementioned Mormon and I have since come to terms: we respect each other's beliefs (well, I respect hers. I think she still secretly prays for me). But I grew up around a lot of self-righteous warring Christian-based groups of people. There was a huge group of Apostolic Lutherans, who all actually talked and looked alike because many of them married third and fourth cousins, and they shared about ten or twelve last names among them, and in their case, it was such an "in" crowd (literally) that they didn't really try to convert you so much as they just sort of looked down on you. They had a very comfortable path all set up for themselves. The boys apprenticed to those building companies (dry wall, carpentry - there was an emphasis on going into professions in which you used your hands, in which you built things. Desk jobs were frowned on) run by other men in the religion, and the women all got married between 16 and 20 (20 was considered old-maidish). They were pretty clear they were all going to heaven, and you weren't. Even if you "converted," you'd never actually be "one of them." You could pretend, but I didn't buy it.

I had another good friend who was a Jehovah's Witness, who didn't stand up to salute the flag or celebrate any holidays. She was pretty ambivalent about her religion, so she didn't try and press it on any of us one way or another. She got a lot of crap about it, so she didn't say much.

Then there was S., who, when my sister told her I'd shacked up with a boyfriend, apparently got a pale, wide-eyed, "She's going to hell," look on her face.

"But, what do you think happens when you die?" she once asked me.

"You just die," I said. "Like anything else. I've seen lots of dead things. I think we die just like them."

"You don't believe in a soul?"

"I don't know."

"Doesn't that make you sad?"

"Not really. It just means I have to live really well, cause this is probably all I'm going to get."

She gave me a very nice poem at one point about a soul cut free from the body who roamed the earth without taste, touch, or smell. It was a beautiful, haunting little poem, and I actually stuck it to my notebook. She was startled, as she'd given me the poem as a sort of joke. In fact, I quite liked it.

So I grew up being told that because I wasn't a Mormon, a Christian-whatever-denomination-she-was like S, a Jehovah's Witness, and because I didn't want to marry my third cousin, I was going to hell. After being told by so many different people about how I was going to hell for not being in their camp, I sort of gave up my comfy "agnostic" answer and decided I didn't believe in god, I believed in people. And I believed we were the only ones who could change things, look after each other, and make the world better.

I did pray a lot to God when I was younger, sort of like writing letters to Santa (again, I apologize if this analogy pisses people off, but honestly, these two were always very close in my mind). But unlike Santa, God never manifested himself, never gave me anything I wanted, never seemed to make things any easier. I had to stop waiting around for God to do things. When I hear people saying they talk to God, they ask God what to do, what I see them doing is what I do with myself: I talk to myself. I figure out what I want. What my body's telling me. What feels right.

I was watching an interview with Joseph Campbell about myths and religions, and he said that, what, somewhere, when he asked someone to explain to him why they bowed to one another when they should reserve such reverence for God (a Buddhist monk, maybe?), the person replied that they were, in fact, bowing to the god inside of that person. Bowing one's head was acknowledging that each person held a piece of God inside of them. It was a reminder that each person should be respected, should be acknowledged.

And that idea worked for me. Instead of running after a God who would put me in Heaven or Hell - who would bring me presents or coal - on the basis of some performance, and being driven by that Fear of God, instead what I should do is just be a good person. Is just be respectful to people. Be good. Be better. Help people.

Because if God is love, God is great, God is power, God is peace, God is destruction, God is good, God is bad, God is right, God is wrong... well, you can find all of those things in people, and in yourself.

What made me increasingly angry with organized religion, with many of the more militant sects of Christianity, was when I actually read the Bible. Not just the Old Testament, but the New Testament. And I realized that all of this "you're going to hell" hate-speech from all of these self-identified "Christians" was a load of crap. What would Jesus do? Probably not tell me I was a hideous whore condemned to the fires of hell. He'd probably be nice to everybody and tell them to love each other. You know, like he does in the Bible. I had a women's history teacher who said that Jesus was the first feminist to get his ideas set down in print where we could see them. And she would say that several times, "Jesus was the first feminist."

And if you look at Jesus as a historical figure, if you look at most of the stuff he's quoted as saying, it's really great stuff. It's "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." And that's to a group of guys who are about to stone a woman to death for adultery.

If Christians are really looking to follow the "teachings" of Christ, they'd be the ones putting out the Spongebog "tolerance" video. They'd be the ones arguing for gay rights. They'd be the first ones on your doorstep saying, "We don't believe women are property, and they have a divine, god-given right to control their own fertility."

And yes, I do know a lot of people of the Christian faith who do believe in love, and tolerance, and bringing people together. I think that if everybody was really acting as the "Jesus" in today's society, things would be a lot better off. We'd hate each other less. We'd work together more. There wouldn't be blue and red states. Just people. Just people who want to love each other, respect themselves, help each other.

Because that's what I saw in the New Testament. No, I don't believe there's an all-powerful creator out there with a big Sauron Eye fixed on me every time I masturbate, but I believe that for those who do believe, they should practice what they're reading, and interpret it themseleves instead of flocking around personalities like sheep. If you believe in love and tolerance, if you have faith in people, then you don't preach hate. You don't tell over half the people in the country that they've been born to act as chattle for the other half.

I do have a faith of my own, and it's based not on one book, or one experience, but on a whole slew of experiences, of twenty-five years of watching people, of listening to stories, of learning to listen to myself, of trying desperately to understand others.

And I believe people can be gorgeous. I believe they can be loved, and that they show a great capacity for love that is often bruised and twisted by those seeking to play power and dominance games. They're twisted up by old, narrowly interpreted books and preachers on pulpits who tell them they and their bodies and desires are awful, grotesque, terrible things. I believe people can be good. I believe they want to be loved. I believe not only in tolerance, but acceptance, because I'm adult enough to see that everything that these religions seek to destroy, all these things they hate, are more or less aspects of myself and of the people that I love.

And I do not believe that teaching others to hate themselves, that pitting Christian denominations and Christians vs. non-Christians against each other is a valuable way to spend the very, very short time we each get on this planet.

"Divide and conquer" is the surest battle strategy ever devised. It's how the US was able to defeat the Native Americans, and why they consigned them to such disparate "homelands." South Africa did the same thing, and it took 60 years of hard fighting to bring people together - a process which remains ongoing.

If you want to give up power to other people, to a wacko-freakshow on the other side of the ocean, what you'll do to yourself and the people around you is go to war with them, with yourself. You'll portion people up into Christians and non-Christians, red states and blue states, pro-choice and anti-choice, pro-human rights and anti-human rights. We'll call it "faith." "Values." We'll forget all about love, about looking for pieces of God in others. We'll forget that church is fun and social and faith is a profoundly personal experience, not a public one. That individual "values" and "beliefs" are for individuals, and to force those beliefs on others does a deep disservice to you both, because you have shown them you have no respect for who they are, for their experiences, for their bodies, for their lives. And you've assumed a higher place, a place of dominance, ascendence, in relation to that person.

And instead of wanting to be good, to be decent, to love, we just want to be right. Everybody wants to be in the camp that gets to portion out who goes to hell, and who goes to heaven. Who gets gifts, who gets coal.

When I finally let go of my belief in Santa, I realized that all those letters I wrote were letters I wrote to my parents. All those loving gifts I got were given to me by real people, the people in my life who loved me. And when I let go of Santa, and reindeer, and endless bags of presents, what I saw were parents who made Christmas magical sometimes on a shoestring budget, with late-night treks to overcrowded toy stores armed with overspent credit cards, against all odds, through exhaustion, working weekends, endless Christmas-Eve closing shifts.

When I drew back the gauze of presents, of Christmas tree, of reindeer, what was left was my family, the people in my life, this expression of human love.

And that, to me, is more magical, more awe-inspiring, more incredible, than God or Santa could ever be.

Yuck

Worst. Protein bar. Ever.

Sweet god, that was bad. Uh. Cardboard. Yuck. I bought a whole fucking box of these yesterday, shit. I need to switch these out. Bah. Blech.

OK, OK, I'll go back to playing Antz or something. Wonder why corporate America turns people into zombies? Because they either 1) hire people to do boring, lifeless jobs 2) pay people to sit around waiting to do boring, lifeless jobs.

Just pulled a pricing sheet for the NYC project off the printer. Oh, please, put me on a plane! I'll go anywhere. Do anything. I'll pay 120K for Law School in order to flee from brain death.

As fine as it is for getting paid to do nothing, I have trouble writing at work (I need loud music, and my best writing time is 7pm-2am, so this is a fucking crap shoot, with all the distractions, though I keep opening shit up and staring at it), so all that "great" writing time is for shit, and here I am blogging about absolutely fucking nothing and throwing away a really, really shitty protein bar and going: yea. Money's good.

My brain will die a slow, painful death. It will not be pretty. It will involve bad protein bars.

Ack. Back to opening up story files.

Someday, I Will Have a Real Job

Wow. I get paid for this. Astonishing. Corporate America.

Blogger Just Ate Another Post

Fucker.

Aimee Bender

Great short story writer. Check out a selection of her stuff here.

Ginmar's Pics From Babylon

Including the famous: Wild Cats of Babylon.

I Can't Belive I Forgot to Have Children!

Older piece by Pollitt, very good:

A long time ago I dated a 28-year-old man who told me the first time we went out that he wanted to have seven children. Subsequently, I was involved for many years with an already middle-aged man who also claimed to be eager for fatherhood. How many children have these now-gray gentlemen produced in a lifetime of strenuous heterosexuality? None. But because they are men, nobody's writing books about how they blew their lives, missed the brass ring, find life a downward spiral of serial girlfriends and work that's lost its savor. We understand, when we think about men, that people often say they want one thing while making choices that over time show they care more about something else, that circumstances get in the way of many of our wishes and that for many "have kids" occupies a place on the to-do list between "learn Italian" and "exercise."

Good Stories, Fake People

Nice peice about the plasticisation of Hollywood stars, and it's ripple-effect. Where are all the real people?

Today's Repeat

Today's song, stuck on repeat: Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica "3rd Planet."

I don't why this song makes me happy to listen to. But, it does.

Finally, Some Context

I wish more people wrote about this shit this way. More on boys vs. girls, done right.

Dreams

Had a dream last night that 1) I was a Supah Ninjah stealing magical artifacts from an archeological dig. Lots of snow caves were involved, and bright spotlights. 2) I was part of said archeological team and having an affair with the lead archeologist, a rather twitchy, dorky guy who finally had to push me off him with the immortal words, "I'm so tired" so he could go back to crunching some sort of ancient archeological puzzle numbers. That troublesome architect from work made an appearance as one of the archelogical team who burst into the lead's place while he and I sat over coffee and bagels and debated ancient puzzle numbers. Upon seeing I was clad in nothing but a towel and quite obviously banging the lead acheologist, the architect broke into a frustrated wail and stomped out of the room.

It occurs to me that I could have an entire blog full of nothing but batshit dream entries.

Night Thoughts

"It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, was ardent but awkward, unsatisfying, more kindly than passionate. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other."

- The Hours. Michael Cunningham.

The Small, Secret Battle

Regular readers know that I'm a binge eater whose default tendency is to overconsume mass amounts of food when I go through a chemical imbalance, usually because of emotional stress or because I've been triggered by eating something that gives me a big glucose spike. I've been fighting to stop this, permanently, for the last year and a half or so. Before that, I was pretty much stuck in the old binge-and-purge cycle - I'd be "on a diet" for 6 months or a year, then "not on a diet" for a couple years, then "on a diet," and etc.

I suspect that most of my body's imbalance has to do with this kind of dieting, which is why I have a vested interest in work being done by Paul Campos and research by Wendy Shanker, who've held a mirror up to the dieting industry and come back wondering how invested that industry really is in "making us thin," encouraging us to be healthy, or - heaven forbid - like ourselves.

My buddy Jenn and I ran errands today, and hopped into Trader Joe's for coffee beans. I picked up some mixed nuts and dried apples, and found myself increasingly twitchy around the prepared foods.

I was hungry, I admit, but I was also stressed about a number of things, angsting over boys (Should I throw in the towel and just go on dates? Just not pursue relationships? Figure out casual sex? Use it as a tool just to meet people? I plan to buy myself a dozen yellow roses and study for the LSATs on the 14th), angsting over the state of my apartment, angsting over the book I'm supposed to be writing, angsting over LSATs (I'd spent a bit of the morning going over practice questions) - and I knew it.

And as we walked down the chocolate-covered everything aisle, I had an intense desire for toffee. Jenn is a hoarder, and can buy a couple tins of this stuff and eat it a piece at a time over a couple of months. I can't.

I wanted a tin. I wanted to eat the whole thing. I stared and stared, and that incredible desire came over me, that full-body, must-have-this-now desire that's like death. I couldn't imagine not having that goddamn toffee. Excelerated breathing, shaky hands. Death. Death without toffee.

I got into line with Jenn, waited half a moment, and went back to the toffee. I tracked it down, put it in my basket, and crept back to the cashier.

The mere act of putting the toffee in my basket somewhat alleviated my intense desire.

Oh, how I wanted that toffee.

And as I stepped up to the cashier, internal yes-no-yes-no voices warring with each other about the goddamn toffee, I swiped the toffee out of my basket and put it in the basket of chocolate coins by the register.

I surrendered it.

My hands were still shaking as I bought the almonds and dried apples. I went after Jenn, got into the car, and ate a couple of the dried apples. I felt better. I didn't need to eat the whole bag. I was only hungry. Just hunger. Assuaging hunger does not mean consuming an entire box of something.

Reseal bag of apples. Neatly fold hands in lap.

Undergo a deep, abiding moment of utter self-loathing.

I hate myself when I do this. And no, I didn't buy the toffee and scarf it down in the car like a fat girl cliche. I didn't do that because that's not who I want to be, not ever again. Cause I've done that on and off for ten years, and I'm tired.

But quelching the actual *desire* to engage in binge behavior is a struggle. I've successfully beat it back for a year, but "not buying 5,000 calories worth of food and consuming it all in one sitting" and "not having the intense, overwhelming desire to consume 5,000 calories in one sitting" are very different things. And it's not fucking easy, and it's another one of those perpetual battles that I have to fight every day, because there's a person I want to be, and she doesn't hide up in her room stuffing away a midnight meal from Taco Bell that could feed a small village in Peru, for no other purpose but that she's depressed, and her body tells her this is the way she has to deal with it, because this is how she deals with it when the emotional stuff gets to be too much.

Thanks, no. I'm not doing that anymore, however briefly those times last.

And yes, there are days when I do wonder if my body is broken, if ten years of binge-and-purge American dieting has broken some key internal regulating device that's now malfunctioning. I don't know. All I know is that I fight it, because like all the things I fight, it pisses me off. And it makes me weak.

Seeing the weakness is the worst part. That was the part I hated, sitting there in the car as Jenn pulled out and we headed out on the next errand. I hated that weak part of myself that wanted, needed, desired, something that was absolutely unneccesary, something I didn't need. The part that desired an easy, temporary escape from my "problems." Because it's a short-term solution that will ultimately do me more harm than good.

When I came home I worked through my eating schedule again. Am I doing OK? What am I eating that's triggering me? Can I cut back on anything? In actual fact, I suspect that my biggest problem right now is that my exercise schedule is erratic, and I've been down to two days of MA classes instead of three all month, for a variety of reasons, and jogging is precarious in the ice and snow, which leaves me lazy around the house (aside from morning weight routine), glaring at the elliptical machine.

On the food front, right now we're looking at a weekday of protein shake for breakfast, string cheese and mixed nuts for snacking, broccoli and chicken for lunch, protein bar snack at 3pm, another protein bar at 6pm, and either an omelette or a whole wheat pita with ham and cream cheese for dinner. I go out to eat once or twice a week, generally indulge in rice and some pastry-type item. Coffee and treat most Sundays. Beer once or twice a week.

This is not an awful thing. On Saturday and/or Sunday mornings, I'll sometimes have low-carb, sugarfree pancakes with sugarfree syrup.

I could become some sort of wack-out crazy and stop going out to eat all together, or only eat salads when I go out. I could stop eating the Sunday dessert. I could cut out all the cheese I eat.

But there's a point at which you cut out so many things that it's just not fun anymore. I just recently swapped the rice, chicken, and veggies I usually prepped for workday lunches for just veggies and chicken. That's worked really well for me.

But there's only so far you can push things before, I fear, what I'll do instead is *encourage* my binge eating by not eating enough during the week, and I can't do that. I've got to find something flexible that works not just *now*, but in the long term. Because I'm working toward a place I want to be with everything in my life - and that includes this body, me, my appetite, my strength. I've spent too long giving up my body while pursuing academic interests, or giving up the academics for my body, and I want that balance. I want that confidence.

Like everything else I push myself to do, this isn't easy either. A part of my deep sense of loathing does have to do with the fact that I feel that this is something I've done to myself. I spent a good bit of time hating myself, and I manifested that hate by showing it in what I'd do to my body. It was unfair of me to do to myself, and I mourn my foolish adolescent decision to punish myself and those around me by heaping it all into my health and appearance. It was stupid, and ultimately, not successful. The only person it actually hurt was me.

And at the same time I realize my fight is far, far, more difficult than that, because I have a grandfather who ate himself to death, an aunt who just had gastric bypass surgery, and my dad's scheduled for the same thing next month.

I know the battle I'm fighting. I know that, like depression, like self-confidence, like strength, it's a battle that's not won, but on-going, and that its origin is as complex as any war, a mix of genetics and environment and past experience.

I don't have any illusions about it. I also realize it's an intensely personal, somewhat trivial battle, because in the grand scheme of the world, one woman who spends her day *not* consumed by self-loathing because of what she desires isn't really all that important.

In some way, you're convinced that what you say and do doesn't change the world, but I suppose you hope that in some small, secret way... Because if you don't know yourself, if you can't overcome your own small, secret battles, how do you change the world? How do you go out there and say, "Listen up, fuckers, and let me tell you how it's done"?

Where's your jumping-off point? Where does that confidence of self come from?

I think it comes from these battles, however stupid and self-absorbed. If I can win the war with myself, I can take on anybody.

I'm my own worst enemy.

And, For Those Keeping Track...

Ginmar's on her way home from Iraq.

Please send her cookies. And hot guys.

Nightmare

I just forced myself awake from a dead sleep. I had a nightmare that Jenn (my roomie) told me that she was moving in with her her SO when our lease ran out in May. I was flabbergasted, because I'd told her months before that as soon as they started talking about it, I would need to know, because I had no money in savings and wouldn't be able to make it on my own unless I had enough of a heads' up to plan. The deep sense of betrayal was extreme.

I then told her yea, that was fine, and I wanted nothing but her happiness, but I had no money, and it meant I'd be living out of a hotel.

She smiled broadly and hopped up and down and said,"OK" and beamed at her SO.

I then proceeded to have a hysterical breakdown. I just couldn't believe somebody I'd counted on was totally ditching me, alone, without any money, when I'd trusted her. I couldn't believe that after everything else, I was being ditched on the side of the road for an SO, never to be seen again. I felt totally betrayed, and she just beamed and beamed and beamed...

It's funny, because the abandonment-from-someone-you-trust and having no means to take care of yourself (money) are fears I know very, very well. I've been ditched with no money before. I don't think I just realized how deep my fear of being ditched with no money was until now.

It's a nightmare-worthy experience.

Moral of the story: I need to put some goddamn money in savings.

Reason I can now go to sleep now, after sitting awake full of terror for half an hour?

I realize I have well over a grand in 401(K) and stock money. I thought through how much money I could stockpile in two months, now that I've got my raise. Could come in early some mornings, beef up the paychecks. I put together a two-month exit strategy. I felt better.

I'll be fine.

Goddamn. The fears that keep you up at night.

Episode 32

In which the protagonist realizes she's utterly exhausted.

She decides to move to France.

Snow

And, yea, there's an incredibly dorky, dorky shot of me "preparing to shovel" which, alas, I will NOT reproduce here. Just the snow:

Casablanca

Is not a romance movie. It's not a movie about people falling in love. It's not, in fact, about real people.

Cardboard Heroine: There's danger here! I'm so confused! Do I want to run away with my rebel-leader husband, or the drunk non-communitive ex-lover of mine who's treated me like shit from the moment I walked in the door?

Drunk Bar Owner: Obviously, I'm in love with this woman. She's so hot. Obviously. Love=hotness. Yes, I realize there are other Hot Women around who pine after me, but this one puts up with me treating her like shit, and that's pretty tough to find.

I mean, c'mon, what the hell do these two people find attractive about each other? Does she juggle? Does he read Kant? What, exactly, do these two people talk about when he's not going, "You bitch!" and she's not going, "I'm so confused! Think for me!"

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's got great dialogue, the dueling national anthems are great, I love the war theme. But is this what love is? Is this all we get as a template?

Sweet fuck, no wonder more than half the people who get married get divorced. I would too, when I found out my partner wasn't "a feeling in Paris" and really was a drunk, non-communitive bar owner.

As Someone Who Absolutely Loathes..

For those in SF circles, you may be aware of the Trent/gabe & friends circle jerk (no, I won't link to him. Matt does. See link to Matt below). I guess I should just be gleeful this time around because he addressed the reader as "you" and reserved "him" for describing any character you might want to write, like a pedophile, who's of course a default he. All he's saying this time around is that you should "force genetic rules" on a character to make them - I mean, him, this is Trentland, after all - more interesting and "truer."

Trent insists that people are boring and consistent and undergo no change whatsoever, or that they follow these "rules" that you can chart like math, so your characters should be boring and totally predictable, too, just like physics.

I'm sorry, what was that about physics? Theories, not facts? Oh nevermind. I mean, that's all psychologists, you know, those people who study people, really do with their time. They make these complex math formulas that tell you that if Sara had a coke at 3pm and Shawna kicked a ball close to her at 4pm, then Sara would "turn into" a lesbian and lose all her money betting on horses when she turned 40, and marry a gay guy named Enrique at 60 who made model airplanes.

Sweet fuck, if people were boring, I would have no friends.

Anyway, people should be just like math problems. Which is why that Golden Age SF stuff had such incredibly fascinating, riveting, characters. Trent has once again stepped down from the mount to exposit to all us "newbies," "wannabes" and "maybes" about how we're supposed to be writing, what we're supposed to be writing, and etc.

I think he mainly writes these things cause he's not spending enough time writing his own damn fiction.

But I don't have to even address this flailer, because Matt Cheney already has.

Bless you, Matt.

Shit, What Did You Expect?

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) is readying a new budget that would carve savings from Medicaid and other benefit programs, congressional aides and lobbyists say, but it is unclear if he will be able to push the plan through the Republican-run Congress.

Where else was the money supposed to come from? No more SS, no more medicare. We have a deep, abiding interest in *life* after all.

Want to know who the 50 most loathsome people in America are? Here's a list (no, not PC, sometimes funny):

50. Ann Coulter

Crimes: Coulter plummets down the list as she slips into irrelevance. As her columns degenerate further into absurd, incoherent attacks against her own personal paranoid fantasy of fanged, drooling, Saddam-loving liberals who hate America and childish France-bashing, we find our outrage slowly giving way to a baffled “I can’t believe I used to go out with you” feeling. Her arguments are ridiculous, her vitriol forced, her hatchet face even harder to look at. Still, she insulted a one-armed war veteran, called reports of the hundreds of tons of missing munitions in Iraq false, claimed Wesley Clark was pro-infanticide, and blamed Abu Ghraib on the presence of women in the armed forces—they’re not all like you, Ann—and on and on. It’s just not worth debunking someone who has no credibility in the first place.

41. Everyone who got together to watch the final episode of “Friends”

Crimes: Allowing a trivial sitcom about living in New York, made for people who’ve never been anywhere near New York, to become a focal point in their shallow, meaningless lives. Watching TV together is not a bonding experience; it is a distancing experience, a way in which people can cohabit a room without actually having to engage each other or connect personally. Whoever’s ultimately responsible for the “watch ‘Friends’ or the terrorists win” meme should have a special room reserved for him in the bad section of hell.

28. Ben Affleck

Crimes: His uncanny ability to produce an unending stream of shitty movies and still get work rivals that of even Kevin Costner. Has coasted for years on a reputation built largely on a former association with Matt Damon, but has done nothing to justify his star status aside from boning Jennifer Lopez. Gigli was the cinematic equivalent of the Madrid bombings.

3. You (me)

Crimes: You gaze idly at the carnage around you, sigh, and go calmly back to your coffee and your People magazine. You can’t stop buying useless crap, though you’re drowning in a deepening pool of debt. You think you’re an activist because you bitch all day on the internet, but you reelect the same gangsters at a 99% rate. You consider yourself informed because you waste a significant portion of your life watching the same three news stories cycle over and over again on your gargantuan, aerodynamic television set while you eat processed food. You really thought everything would be okay if Kerry won. Not only do you believe in an invisible man who magically farted out the universe, you also excoriate and marginalize those who disagree. You have a poorer understanding of your country’s foreign policy history than a third world peasant, but you can’t wait to see what Julia Roberts will be wearing at the Oscars. You cheer as Ukrainians challenge an election based on exit poll data, but keep waiting around for someone else to fix your problems. You can’t think, you can’t organize and you won’t act. This is all your fault.

What, you think I can argue with that?

Update

Dude. 6 or 7 inches? Actually, over a foot, and still falling.

Jenn has pictures. I'll try and steal them.

Guess who's getting up early tomorrow?

EDIT: for those reading this post before the one below, Julian reminds me to remind those of you heading out to parties tonight that I'm talking about -- the SNOW. I am talking about the SNOW. Pictures of THE SNOW.

Ahem.

Digging Out

Waded up and out to class today, then dropped by Old Navy to buy a new pair of khaki pants.

Unfortunatley, the one pair I liked and wanted they didn't have in my size. Or, rather, they had it in my size, and it didn't fit, so I got the next size up, and *that* didn't fit, and the wash of failure and oh-dear-god-I'm-going-insane-I'm-working-so-hard-and-I'm-the-size-of-a-house feeling overcame me. I then realized they were an "ultra low-rise" cut, which means you *have* to buy them a size or two bigger than you usually wear.

Trying on regular cuts, I fit in them fine.

Panic averted.

Oh, to be white and middle class, with a cozy job with government ties and an apartment with hardwood floors and central heating! Oh, to be one of the few who can waste enormous amounts of mental energy angsting about whether or not she can fit into manufactured clothing sizes! To be so lucky!

Yes. I'm aware of the sheer idiocy of this. Now... to make myself stop.

In fact, the best way to make myself stop was to go upstairs and shop in the boys' section. The coats all fit better (broader shoulders, and the pants are longer - for some reason they don't sell women's khaki pants in a "long" cut).

I was wearing a bulky black peacoat of the Chicago variety, and had my hair tucked up under a navy green newsboy cap, and I was wearing the boots I've got that put me at about 6 feet tall, and I breezed past one of the saleclerks trying to sell Old Navy cards. I had just come from class, so I had that boxer's walk (read: very masculine walk), and she says behind me, "Sir? Sir...? Uh... Ma'am?"

I turned. She apologized profusely.

I, however, thought being mistaken for a boy was supremely funny, and told her it was no big deal, and no, I already have an Old Navy card.

I admit that much of my anger about the "girls vs. boys" generalizations as far as height, weight, and strength are concerned comes from the fact that I'm not and have never been very small. Not in height or weight or the breadth of my shoulders. So when I look at guys on the train, and I'm being honest with myself, I'll think, "You know, there's not much of a difference."

This is, of course, because I'm as tall as, or taller than, half the men in the country (the average guy is 5'9), and outweigh him by ten pounds or so (average guy is 180-90). So, in my universe, when I have my confidence back and look around, what I'm seeing are a lot of people who don't look all that differently, and whose differences have more to do with everybody trying to wear what they think they're supposed to wear and eat as much as they think they're supposed to eat, and pretend they're bigger or smaller or whatever.

When I was in Denver, I caught an interview with Taye Diggs on the Chris Rock show. If you know Taye Diggs, you'll know that he's absolutely beautiful. The guy smiles and the whole goddamn room lights up. Rock was harrassing him about being so pretty, and how women must go nuts over him, and Diggs said,

"You know the first thing women say when they meet me in person? -- `Damn, you're short!'"

For the record, he's about 5'10.

Funny, how we all get our little complexes based on what we're supposed to be like. Women always worrying about being too big, men worrying about being too small.

Kind of stupid, isn't it?

If the coats fit better in the guy's section, maybe it's not me that's fucked up, maybe it's the clothes.

Anyhow, it's a mess out here in Chicago, and I've got to go dig out my roommate's car from about six or seven inches of snow... and counting. For the record, it's not that she couldn't do this: it's just that if I do it, it won't take as long.

Gosh, you'd think that without a boy in the house, we'd be housebound, huh?

Bah. It's funny, how in real life, nobody bats an eyelash, but talk about being strong and capable and smart outside a "real life" setting: in cyberspace, in a classroom, anywhere in academia, and people freak out. They forget to remember all the people they actually hang out with, the ones who get up every morning and live their lives. If you don't get up and live, you'll die a lot sooner.

It doesn't behoove Natural Selection to select for dumb-and-weak-without-the-Y.

But I think this is one of those days when I'm preaching to the choir.

I'm off...

God Is Angry.

I would be too. Such displeasure on the state of affairs: tsunamis, gay sponges, snowstorms. I mean, it's so obvious the end is nigh.

I'll spend it curled up with my copy of On War and some hot chocolate.

It seems entirely appropriate.

Life's Great Mystery

Why is it that when my cheap headphones crap out, it's always the right headphone that craps out?

Truly, one of life's great mysteries.

Uppity Women

I'm going to lunch.

Barbara Boxer For President

If this administration is remembered, by historians, for the fuck-up it is (and as somebody with historical training, I can tell you that the verdict is well, well out at this point. We won't know for years just how the text books will write up this one. Victors write history), then I want them to remember this, too, and get this woman running for President next time around:

For the second time this month, California's junior senator has thrown a wrench into the works of the second-term White House machine. She did it two weeks ago, when she was the only senator to object to the certification of electoral votes from Ohio. And she did it this week, on the eve of George W. Bush's second inauguration, when she put hard questions to Rice and then cast a committee vote against her confirmation. Ohio's electoral votes were eventually counted, and Rice will eventually be confirmed. But largely because of Boxer, the road has been rockier than the White House had expected; the vote on Rice's confirmation will be delayed until next week so Senate Democrats can have time to debate it.

Interview excerpt, Boxer:" We live in a democracy. This isn't a monarchy. The people's opinion is very important here, and right now 58 percent of them are worried about the way this war is going. And so many people watched the hearing. I was very happy to get thousands and thousands of phone calls and e-mails and the rest. And that's what saves the country many times, the people of this country. If we start abusing power, they catch you. That's what I want to do, keep the people engaged. I was really pleased with the breadth and the depth of the questions that were asked, and I like to think that I had something to do with that."


Remember right now that she said this was fucked up, said it with her votes, in a public forum, however "inevitable" the final decision. The only senator to speak up once, one of two to stand up to Rice.

Remember that.

via BitchPh.D

In Which the Protagonist Finally Begins Quoting Oprah (C'mon, You Knew This Was Coming)

Oprah's latest is out, and work is dull, so guess what I'm reading? Our mailperson's probably thinking our house has got weird taste. Oprah, National Geographic, Shape (yea, I know, I should be subscribing to Hers, but Shape was damn cheap. When the sub. runs out, I'm switching), The Sun (some lit mag), Mother Jones, Locus, and Scientific American arrive on our doorstep each month without fail.

Being the February issue, this one's all about love, and happy hetero couples. The day they've got a couple same-sex couples in here is the day I'll feel more comfortable with it (and they have, actually, but female "friends," and in an issue where the focus is marriage... well, you know). As much as I love this magazine ("Be a better person," "Live Your Best Life," it ain't Cosmo), there are still things like that that irk me. That, and the spread about how Oprah's working on losing "the last ten pounds" with a couple other people from her office, and I'm like, "Maybe you're having trouble losing those ten pounds because you've reached a really healthy, comfortable set point. You look amazing. You feel great. Why are you doing this?"

Anyway, so it's articles on marriage. Yes, and they're all happy-ending marriages. No 20-year partnerships, no long-term "we decided *not* to get-married"s, but everybody who did the ceremony and signed the certificate. And there's a little too much chasing and freak-out going on in some of these. But it's headed toward February, and as my roomie's been pretty much living with her SO, this stuff's been on my mind more than usual. Humor me.

There was, however, an interesting little spot with Gloria Steinem. I was one of those people who, when I heard she got married, felt pretty let down and deflated. Who did I have out there that I could look up to and say, "Dude. She's not married!"

Steinem explained why she did it:

She [Steinem] said what we're all really waiting for is to become strong enough so that we can be "interdependent with another human being without giving up ourselves... Two whole beings leaning on each other equally," she said. "not one leaning more than the other." She added that we can't get interdependence "until we have experienced independence first."

As cozy as that sounds, there's something I read, I think in Greer's The Female Eunuch, about the deep comfort of knowing that the person sleeping next to you was there because they wanted to be, and not because they had nowhere else to go. And a legal piece of paper and personal words of committment spoken aren't the easiest things to undo (well, celebrities notwithstanding). I think I find the idea terrifying that I'd be sleeping next to someone merely because he or I felt trapped, and had nowhere else to go. That's not an equal partnership, to me.

Back to Mark Epstein and women growing up as "it," I found this tidbit, which struck me as sounding very familiar:

Simone was an accomplished architect, respected and successful in her field. yet in her relationships, Simone hid behind a persona that she did not feel completely in control of. She was an expert in adapting to other people's needs. Simone came across as something of an ingenue: pretty, self-effacing, caring, empathic, and more helpless than she really was. Men fell in love with her easily, and she would often find herself involved in relationships for extended periods of time with people she was not really interested in, simply because they wanted her. It was not that she was not in touch with her true feelings: She was. But her need to please was so overwhelming that she could not listen to herself for any sustained length of time. Other people had priority. She would resolve to break up with a boyfriend, fend him off for a few days or weeks, but ultimately surrender to his needs or demands... Listening to her own voice, to her own desire, carried with it the risk of offending those she was close to.... to be kind to herself, and to free those she had ensnared in her adaptive web, Simone had to hazard being mean. To desire meant to risk being offensive.

What I love about blogging, reading, education, going out into the world, is that you realize there are actually a lot of people like you, and you're not crazy (this was my big draw to feminism. I finally came into it, for real, after Clarion, when I was trying to figure out why I was writing what I was writing). Anyhow, Epstein goes on to say some really great stuff about women overcoming the "it" feeling and men overcoming the "must have `it' to be a real man" thing, and talks about love as equal partnership. And I'd roll that over not only into hetero/same-sex love, but friendships-without-sex too. If you're not all on an equal footing, if the affection isn't mutual, friendships will falter too.

Some days, I think I shouldn't read this shit, cause it's hetero-marriage-centric. Other days, I fess up to the fact that it's something that interests me, figuring out people, relationships, desire. I'm fascinated with what pulls people together, and tears them apart.

Then I was paging through Shape, and found an article that looks at finding "emotional" problems as to why you aren't losing weight, or why you put on weight. As somebody who knows herself very well, I'm clear that the two times in my life when I've put on the most weight were times when I was seeking to dissuade male attention, to un-objectify-myself because I feared that male attention. One of their suggestions for overcoming this?

Take self-defense classes.

Yea.

And I'll tell you right now, if there's anybody out there like me who's noticed this same tendency: the self defense thing, feeling stronger, more capable in your own skin -- it does really, really help. Instead of trying to put a layer of fat padding and baggy clothes between you and fear, you get to look it in the face and go, "Not so scary now that I know how to throw a right cross and a front kick."

It occurs to me... that things are better.

Real Threats To American Security.

Obviously.

Oh, *That's* Why I'm "Picky"

Cause there are enough psychos in the world.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A former police detective who worked for Robert Blake as a private investigator testified Thursday that the actor proposed kidnapping Bonny Lee Bakley, forcing her to have an abortion, and if that did not work, "whack her."

I read too much news.

No Shit

Wow. When I posted about this months and months ago, I assumed it was a total liberal conspiracy theory. Seriously. I didn't believe they'd do it. I didn't believe they could.

Let's not give the response everyday Germans gave after WWII: know right now that you'll never, ever be able to say, "We didn't know."

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 - Just hours before being sworn in for a second term, Vice President Dick Cheney publicly raised the possibility on Thursday that Israel "might well decide to act first" to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

And I have to live with it. Why? Who do I fight to stop a bigger fight? Because it doesn't stop at "Just Afghanistan (Austria)" and then "Just Iraq (Poland)" it goes on and on and on until you fuck with somebody who's stronger than you. It took Roosevelt and Churchill being best buddies and rumors about Roosevelt making us take a hit so we'd come together to stop Hitler.

Who the hell stops the US?

Once More, With Feeling

Let's sum up, shall we?

"As long as there are entrenched social and political distinctions between sexes, races or classes, there will be forms of science whose main function is to rationalize and legitimize these distinctions."- Elizabeth Fee

How about: nobody knows what the fuck they're talking about. They can't even agree.

The study shows women having more white matter and men more gray matter related to intellectual skill, revealing that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence and that different types of brain designs are capable of producing equivalent intellectual performance.

And, from somebody else entirely:

Research has long shown that men's brains are larger, on average, than women's — by about 100 grams. This may partly be due to the fact that men are larger than women, on average. Plus, what men have in volume, women make up in connections between brain cells.

Further research into other disciplines will show you that men, on average, are encouraged to eat more and be more physically active than women. Girls as young as 10 in this country are encouraged to go on diets and be smaller (and anybody who's researched gender relations in other countries and cultures, women have consistently been encouraged to eat less, and have actually been given less food at the dinner table than their brothers).

When I found myself struggling with learning pre-algebra (key, key to everything else after this) in the sixth grade, I was learning from a butt-fuck misogynist of a teacher who saw that I'd gotten all but three problems on my assignment wrong and instead of saying, "Gee, maybe I should work with you after class" or "Gee, maybe I should figure out a way to explain this concept that connects with you," he said something to the immortal effect of, "Well, you know, they say girls just aren't good at math."

Him and Newt would have gotten along great.

And here's something else for you to chew on when you read these "studies":

In a wonderful book titled The Bonds of Love, the pschoanalyst Jessica Benjamin wrote of an epiphany two pschologists had whole strolling past a hospital nursery... The newborns were clustered together, each in his or her own plastic bassinet... Benjamin described the two pschologists, one of them the mother of a newborn boy, staring anxiously into the nursery... to enliven the drab sterility of the hospital enviroment, the nurses had attached to each bassinet a blue or pink card... on each blue one was written in big letter's I'M A BOY!, while on each pink one was inscribed IT'S A GIRL! The boys were "I", but the girls were "it." The boys were endowed with an instant sense of self, while the girls were treated as objects from the beginning.
- Mark Epstein, MD. "I Want, Therefore I Am."

There's a huge biological difference between men and women: most women can bear children. Men can't. Everything else, all of the social and power bullshit, the fear, the rigid categories, all of that comes from this one big, huge, basic difference.

But the rest... the rest... until I enter the world on an equal playing field, I'm going to question every damn thing that comes out of these people's mouths, because they've been brought into the world with "it" and "I" assumptions, and everything they work through will be coming from that one basic assumption.

I fight against that assumption every damn day. I have no idea how hard it must be for the "I"s to try it. Fact is, most of them don't have to. They can just say, "Girls are dumb," and push you to the back of the class.

And every day you have to get up, and sit in the front again.

EDIT: You know what really bugs me? That the first thing they say isn't, "Gosh, the way we teach math must not be working for over half the population! There must be something seriously wrong with our education system and the way we teach math! We need to have more flexible programs that connect with everybody, including women who've been taught that they're dumb by sure virtue of their birth! Maybe we should address that!"

No, no, it's much easier to wave a hand and say, "Girls aren't good at it."

UPDATE: Maureen has some thoughts.

Why People Like Me Will Have Trouble With the LSAT

Because people like me will have to answer questions like this (no, I'm not making this up, it's in my practice book):

Every adult male woolly monkey is larger than even the largest female woolly monkey. In colonies of woolly monkeys, any adult male will dominate any female.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following must on the basis of them be true of woolly monkeys?

A. Size is the primary determinant of relations of dominance among woolly monkeys.
B. Some large adolescent male woolly monkeys dominate some smaller females of the species.
C. If a male woolly monkey is larger than a female of the species, that male will dominate that female.
D. If a female woolly monkey dominates a male of the species, the dominated male monkey is not an adult.
E. An adult male woolly monkey can dominate a female of the spcies only if that female is also an adult.

You guys don't really think I could answer that question dispassionately, do you?

I'd be more likely to write in an answer, F:

F. If the female monkeys gang up on the male monkeys, they will kick the male monkey's asses, and teach them that female monkeys are vicious fucking fighters when provoked. All the monkeys will be happy and live in harmony after that, and when Big, Evil Male Monkeys try to dominate by sheer force of size, they will be brutally castrated and kicked out of the troop, where they will then be eaten by scavengers, making effective use of "natural" selection. It will be a great day for monkeys everywhere.

Think I could get into law school with that one?

No?

For the record, the answer is D. My initial knee-jerk answer was C, which shows just how many of my own cultural biases I'm carrying around.

Must... learn... to... be... logical....

Speaking of Listening to Yourself..

Nice piece.

As incredible as it sounds, nutrition is no longer the priority for the government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The new guidelines put the entire nation on a diet...

via bigfatblog

Food For Thought

I was doing my periodic overview of my eating habits tonight, because I came home and reached for a beer and realized why it is that I don't buy it that often: cause I'll drink it.

Ah, binge behavior.

I'd had alcohol on Saturday night (celebratory dinner), and a beer and a half on Tuesday, and decided last night to pass and opt for Diet Dr. Pepper, which I did again tonight.

Just gotta watch what you're doing. Beer is OK once or twice a week. Every night, it is not. I do find comfort foods/habits fascinating, though. How higher-stress means I've got a greater desire for food, and since I've resolved not to binge eat (and, honestly, I don't have any binge-worthy foods in the house. You can only eat so many eggs and radishes, which is why I have a refrigerator full of eggs and vegetables), how I try to transfer that feeling to something else. The idea is that I'll eventually be able to channel that energy into increasing the amount of exercise I do, but I'm not at that point yet.

Mainly, I'm at the point of, "Can't eat? Can't drink beer? Going to bed."

Instead, I'll catch up on some reading, and fume some more about idiots like Newt Gingrich.

Those Pesky, Pesky Women in the Ditches

Was channel flipping tonight while finishing up my omelette, and found VH1's "I love the 90s." They did a quick soundbite of these immortal words uttered by then Adjunct Professor Newt Gingrich, about why women should be excluded from combat:

"Females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days, because they get infections."

I nearly choked on said dinner. Sound familiar?

I remembered this quote. At the time I would have been like 15, and I remember thinking something along the lines of, "Oh, of course. That makes sense."

No thought on my part whatsoever. No questioning. Just assumption. No, "Infections? Infections from what, exactly? The vagina periodically expells blood, but it's not an open wound."

And I didn't sit and wonder how, exactly, the female guerilla fighters (let alone refugees, nomads, and anybody who didn't have running water everywhere else, in every other time but the last hundred years and not even that, in many places now) in Africa, Palestine, and in the times stretching back behind me, had managed to survive living in ditches, blown out houses, on the back of carts, under freeway passes, and huddled in tents without dying of serious infections from their gaping wounds.

Here's the whole thing, which actually gets worse and worse as it goes on:

"If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don't have upper body strength. I mean, some do, but they're relatively rare. On the other hand, men are basically little piglets, you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it, doesn't matter, you know. These things are very real. On the other hand, if combat means being on an Aegis-class cruiser managing the computer controls for twelve ships and their rockets, a female may be again dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes."

-Adjunct Professor Newt Gingrich, "Renewing American Civilization" Reinhardt College, January 7, 1995

At some point, they're going to run out of arguments. Question this stuff. Don't let them preach from on high, cause if they can get away with it, they will.

Stomp. Shout. Scream. Yell. Be heard. This is fucking ridiculous. These are the people in the "power" positions who are telling us who we can be and what we can do.

And they're utterly fucking lunatic.

Oh, Shit! Don't Bring Up Roosevelt!

Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Just fucking gorgeous.

Judy Bachrach is fuckin' awesome.

Thoughts on the Gay Rights Movement

Jason's got a good post up about the state of the gay rights movement in the US.

On the personal level, the case for treating gay people with decency has never been more robust. I would be willing to bet that more people are openly gay right now than at any other time in history [Brutal Women note: in this country, maybe. Not in Greece or Rome or some other places where sexuality was a little more fluid.. for men, anyway]. Acceptance of different sexual orientations has never been more widespread, and despite a recent backlash, the poll numbers still show an overwhelming trend in our direction.

It's well documented that when a straight person actually knows a gay person, the prejudices vanish on both sides. [Brutal Women note: because oddly, it's really difficult to hate a person when you realize... they're a real person. This is important] The water cooler chats, the backyard barbecues, even the family reunions very often go our way so long as we just show up and affirm who we are. Sure, there have been a few failures down here (my own family, for example), but on the whole we have had great success at the very lowest level of politics...

Strong at the highest and lowest levels, the gay rights movement is weak in the middle. The midsections of American politics--school boards, city councils, and state governments--are more solidly against us than any other sector in American public life.

OK, OK, I'll Say It:

"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter 10

When Jesus said, "Love Your Enemies," I think he probably meant, "Don't Kill Them."
-anon

"The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
—George W. Bush, second presidential debate

It's like a bad science fiction novel. A really, really bad science fiction novel.

And Now It Is 3'o clock

No, I actually don't work much for a living, most days. Of course, when we do work, we work.

Just not today.

Hence my increasing restlessness.

This is Why You Don't Shut Up

Cause nobody's gonna know why it's inappropriate or understand how it effects you to hear this crap all the goddamn time until you get up off your ass in protest and scream at the top of your lungs .

You've got to speak the fuck up.

Bet I'll Be Thinking About This The Next Time Sifu Kat's Like, "OK, now it's a jump, squat, front kick, balance, squat!" And I Go: "Oh, Fuck"

From Pound (ignore the stereotyping a moment):

Maybe one night sometime in the future I will be in the parking lot of a Miami nightclub minding my own business, when a well-known rap artist and/or producer and/or promoter extraordinaire will step out of the building escorted by several bodyguards at the precise moment a late-model black Escalade with tinted windows careens past the entrance with a menacing shriek of tires skidding on asphalt, and shots will ring out, and the bodyguards will pop a few back, and then, just a second later, some instinct will compel me to put one leg out, extend the other leg back, and, keeping my feet carefully aligned at shoulder width, dip down and execute a perfect squat lunge just as a bullet zips overhead and misses me by a few inches.

Because there has to be a reason I did about a hundred and fifty of those fuckers today, right? Right?

You Know, I Have To Say It

Secretary of State.

Black woman. And yea, she's a ball-buster. She's smart. She's brutal. She'll kick your ass. First black woman to hold the post. Second woman.

In the history of the US.

I don't want to say "good for you" because she's done it with a foreign policy I don't agree with, and an attitude toward the rest of the world that sickens me, but shit, how many old white men have held the post with the same politics? And no, her parents didn't join the civil rights movement, and there's talk that she's seen as "disconnected" from the black community ("playing white"), but shit.

I gotta give credit where credit's due.

Next up: let's get people into this position who don't have to be bully assholes to get there.

Teenagers have Sex? No Way!

Actually, what I found interesting about this study is that they didn't break up the results based on the gender/sex of the teen. I'm not sure how to read that. More significantly, they didn't ask about "safe" sex - when teens choose to have sex, how much time do you spend thinking about contraception, what do you use, do you just shrug and go "Oh, nobody gets pregnant the first time!" or "of course he doesn't have herpes, he's a nice boy!" etc.

That would be far more interesting. "Teenagers have sex" (and don't tell their parents! Shocking!) is a pretty dull reason/conclusion for a study. I remember condoms being a big, big deal in college. You just didn't have unsafe sex. That's the way it was (same attitude in South Africa, for obvious reasons). In high school, being younger, less informed, I had friends who did some really dumb stuff really dumbly, but college was a different matter. I'd be more interested in how teens approach the potential consequences of sex - physically and emotionally.

"People have sex" is a given. What a waste of money.

For Your Workday Amusement

E-MAIL SHORTHAND THAT CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS WOULD LIKELY HAVE USED IN LETTERS HOME HAD THE TECHNOLOGY BEEN AVAILABLE TO THEM.


REJECTION LETTERS FROM XAVIER'S SCHOOL OF EXCEPTIONAL YOUTH:

Dear Sarah "Fan Girl" Williams,

We regret to inform you that you have not been selected as a member of this year's class. Being able to recite, verbatim, the lines from every Orlando Bloom movie, while impressive, is not technically a superpower. Also, the fact that you are prohibited by law from coming within 10 miles of Orlando Bloom might limit our team's scope of service. Thank you for your interest in Xavier's School of Exceptional Youth.

Sincerely,
Professor X

"ROCKIN' IT, FRAT-PARTY STYLE!": A SHORT STORY GEARED TO COLLEGE STUDENTS, WRITTEN BY A 30-SOMETHING AUTHOR.

For those who think Tom Wolfe's latest is utterly pretentious.

Confessions of a New Coffee Drinker:

This stuff is great! I'm 26! I always ignored it, thinking, "Why start a bad habit?" This is a terrific habit! I get more done in an hour than I used to get done in a week. Coffee! I bought a coffeemaker. It makes the coffee for me in the morning! I open my eyes and it's there! I can see! The difference between tea and coffee is like a merry-go-round to a rocket ship! I like rocket ships! Coffee! I want to go on a real rocket ship. Where are they? Cape Canaveral? Let's go! Coffee helps my creativity. I can come up with something creative out of nowhere. "Larry laughs like a lavicious lunatic!" See!? That was instantaneous!

Maxim Does the Classics.

Boys Pissed Off With Plan B

Idiots. I love Amanda:

___________________________

Excerpt:

"As I figured, the ad for Plan B in Tuesday's Daily Texan would generate at least one outraged letter from a male conservo-virgin. He didn't go so far as accuse the Texan of trying to screw his chances at marriage, but he does come very, very close."

I expect to find advertisements in the paper; even more than usual considering the budget cuts. But the flyer found inside my Texan as I opened it flabbergasted me: a flyer that advertised not just a day-after pill, but a THREE day-after pill!

"Who knew that the sperm could slosh around in there for three days? You ruined this young man's masturbation fantasies for at least a week, oral contraceptive manufacturers."

That if, in the "heat of the moment," you forget to practice safe sex, it's OK because you have a "second chance?"

"His idea of what people do in bed is vastly different from mine. I can see it now--a nubile co-ed in the arms of a hunky frat boy on a Friday night.

"Oh honey, let's forget the condom tonight. On Monday, I can go just wait in line for 3 hours at Planned Parenthood to get a prescription for Plan B, drive over to Walgreen's and get it filled and then significantly reduce my chances of getting pregnant, even though I still may." Mmmm....sexy."
_________________________

To which I'll add: or, because I didn't know there was such a thing as Plan B and that it was actually available if I took an entire day off work to make the drive, wait in line, fulfill the perscription, I'll drive four hours and pay $300 for an abortion after pushing past hordes of conservatives screaming that I'm a dirty whore and throwing shit at me. Then I'll listen to people talk about "people like me" for the rest of my life, saying I must be a hollow, evil, person who wants to kill herself because I didn't fulfill my breeding duty.

Or maybe I won't risk the drive (I don't have a car or $300) and have the kid anyway, get on welfare to pay for my medical costs, try and marry the frat boy who I'm not really all that into anyway and who'd make my life and his unbearable (who'll laugh at me cause he has a football scholarship), and instead squeeze child support out of him for the rest of his life (law willing), and take up a job at the local burger joint.

Odds are (definately not always true, but I'm going to go there), I'll end up resenting my kid, resenting all frat boys, and kicking myself about how I've blown all of my potential on having a kid I could have waited to have ten years later instead.

There are women who succeed when they fall into this life-altering situation (yes, I know them), and who love their kids and can't imagine living without them. But for every one of those, there are three or four more who are just like a buddy of mine (who was always more brilliant than me) working at Walmart after having married a slack-ass of a kid who's unemployed. Women with this amazing potential, with these incredible dreams, who got caught in the "it's a life" trap, and forgot about their own lives.

I despise being told I have to sacrifice all that I am in order to flush my body of a handful of cells with the self-consciousness of a pancreas.