Notes of All Sorts

My dad let me know that, apparently, my hometown dentist has just confessed to killing his wife with a pair of scissors. No shit. The guy's been my dentist for over a decade. Go figure. Small towns. Happy relationships. Psychos.

More reasons why I don't date.

In other news, Yellow - of all people - suggested we stop by Borders before the meeting, and I did pick up my much-wished-for Greenday CD. It's a damn good CD. He also sought relationship advice from me about some woman he's been pining after. I told him I'm bad at relationship advice. I'm surprised to hear that he called her "a real smart girl" at least twice. I should have bet he was actually drawn to smart women. He has three or four sisters, all of them high-powered, quick cookies. One's a psychiatrist, one a lawyer or doctor or something, or maybe one a doctor and one a lawyer. They'd be cool to meet.

He admitted to being hesitant to suggest restaurant choices to take her out to, because she lives around the Loop downtown, and pretty much knows every place like the back of her hand.

"Well," I said, "Why not just owe up to it? Why not just tell her, `hey, this is something you do better than me, would you mind picking a place?"

"You mean, instead of trying to be the guy?"

"Yea... no offence or anything, Yellow, but you're kinda bad at it."

"Is it that obvious?"

I'm reminded of lunch that day, when he mulled around the foyer of the restaurant we were at, indecisive about whether or not we should wait for Sarah to finish her cigarette before we sat down, or to sit down and wait for her inside. I gave him about five minutes of mulling around, talking aloud about what would be best, before I realized he was doing what Yellow does, and I went up to the hostess and got us seated. Indecisiveness drives me nuts, at least until I know how the dynamics are gonna work. If I'm with somebody who hates making the call, I'll make the call, but I tend to default to thinking they'll make the call. Can be annoying, until you figure out the dynamics with the person you're with.

"I just don't like telling people what to do," he said.

"Yea, well."

"I mean," he said - baiting me again - "on dates I'm totally decisive. I tell her where to sit and where to stand."

"And what to wear and what to eat," I said, "and then you wonder why you don't go on more dates."

"What?"

The problem with hanging out with Yellow is that I've avoided him so much the last year that he's not used to me harrassing him, so when I do, it sort of sideswipes him.

As per the usual, he spent some time baiting me - and for once, I finally gave in and started baiting him back. Talked too much about politics. I drew way back on that one - he's moderate-to-moderate-conservative, so I had to ease off. It was fun. Enjoyable trip. Crappy, useless meeting, but fun chatting with Yellow and Sarah. I love working with these people.

Realized again, after spending time harrassing Yellow, how great people are... and how many men there are in the world just like Yellow; pushing 35, looking for wives, families, picket fences. Ready to settle. Slow down. Cozy jobs. Nice people. Funny, how it's almost like he's sort of looking for somebody to fill a role; actively seeking "a wife," someone to have kids with. Actively looking for the picket fence. I often forget he's a decade older than me because I'm not sure what, exactly, he's done with all that time. Got married and divorced, apparently. And worked a lot. Raced motorcycles. That's about it.

We had a very long trip to Indy, and during the downtime, after we dropped Sarah off and hit some crappy traffic, we got to talking about his racing, and my book writing. Apparently, there are racers who race for "contingency money" - which means that if you win a race wearing/using the products of a company like Suzuki or whatever, then that company will give you X amount of money for winning a race using their gear.

"So," Yellow said, "has anybody ever asked to be a character in your book?"

I laughed. I know Yellow. I know where this is going. "All the time. Though, not since high school."

"So, would you make me a character in your book?"

"You know, you're just the sort of person from high school who would have asked me that question."

The guy who hangs half with the stoners, half with the preppy kids, the one who finds me interesting enough to talk to, but is way too fearful to date me. Yep. Met a million like him.

I wonder what he'd think of being a "character" in my blog....

"What's the title of your book?" he said.

"Which one? I guess the latest in my series is called Over Burning Cities."

"Over Burning Cities?" he considers this. "I'll write the name of your book on my bike, so that if I win, you'll get the promotion."

"Do I have to pay you contingency money, or just make you a character?"

"Well, it would help if I was a character in your book..."

The idea of Yellow writing the title of one of my books on his bike - for whatever hypothetical silly joking reason - is one I find strangely endearing.

And at the end of the night, when he dropped me at the train station, I realized that I'd finally let myself just enjoy hanging out with this guy. I hadn't worried too much about speaking my mind or making fun of him back, because I realized, for the first time, that I wasn't worried about him hitting on me.

Not that I'd mind him hitting on me - I just never trusted myself before to turn him down. I didn't want him to ask, I didn't want to be nice to him at all, to interact with him too much, because I was afraid that there were enough things about him that I liked that I'd try and force something to work with him, because I worried I was too picky, too cynical, that I was turning perfectly good people away.

And yea, Yellow's a good guy. He's got a passion. He's cute. He has nice shoes. He looks very good in cargo pants.

But I'm not crazy about him. He's an Alaska Boy type, meaning I have affection for him. I think he's funny. I like to harrass him. He's the sort of person you're friends with, not the sort of person you're drawn to. He doesn't light up my day. I don't feel a huge pull. What I feel is that he's the sort of guy I'd be settling for. Somebody who was almost, maybe, OK, "He's nice, but he doesn't read books. He doesn't think like I do. I don't connect with him about anything. We look out at the world and see absolutely nothing in the same light. We have way different paths we want to take with our lives."

He wants kids. A wife, a woman to fill a role. A picket fence. He's lived in Illinois his entire life. He will die here. He loves this life, this simplicity. And I respect that, and I enjoy hanging out with him. But there's no life I could build with this person.

And it's funny, because there are so many people in the world, and so many guys like Yellow, guys who are funny and nice and simple, and I've been accused of turning them away, of not seeing them, of being "too picky." And it's funny, because so far, I'm lucky: I'm 25, not 35, so not too many people are trying to force me to settle for somebody who's second, somebody I'm not wild about, somebody who's simple.

If I can find these wild, crazy, brilliant friends, I hold out hope that I can find a lover or two who's just as wild, crazy, brilliant, and inspriring. I think that when something's not right, you know it. And when it's right, you know that too.

And Yellow is fun to work with. And I won't be a bitch to him anymore, and I can say "hello" to him first now. I'm not afraid of what I'll do if he ever says, "So. Valentine's day. You're single. I'm single."

Cause I can just say, "That must have taken a truly decisive mind to figure out. Where are the structurals for site XXXX?"

And we'll move on.

As it should be.

Indy Today

Why the crossroads of America?

Because, if you know any better, you'll cross through it without stopping.

Will be quiet today as we head down for a kick-off meeting in Indy, so every time you click over and see this post, you can think of me traveling through the scenic red state of Indiana with Yellow and Sarah while Yellow sings his own rendition of, "Ice, Ice, Baby," and Kameron-baits me with questions like, "So Kameron, what do you think of that book, `What Would Jesus Eat?'" and "I really like soy milk. What do you think of soy milk, Kameron?" and "Why won't you eat this cookie? There's nothing wrong with it. These are really good. You're so complex, Kameron."

"No, Yellow, you're just very simple."

::watch Yellow's *entire face turn red*:::

Oh, yea, that was a great day.

Anyhow, that's pretty much what my day's going to amount to. It's good because we're meeting up with Pete and Bettie, who we shindigged with last summer, and who I enjoy working with very much. They're really good people.

Should be a fun project.

In Which the Protagonist Engages in the Usual Sort of Freak-Out Behavior Related to the Stupid Things She Does When She Knows Better Than to Do Them

Oh. Wow. Look at that. All of my freak-out triggers just fired. Every damn one. Why is it, again, that I don't date? Ah. Yea. Cause of that. There. This feeling.

I know I'm out of it not just because I flaked out on tonight's MA class and left work early with the "I have to be up at 4am and spend all day in Indy excuse" but because I stopped by Borders to pick up the new Greenday CD, brought it home, unwrapped it, put it into my computer... and thought:

"Hey, this sounds a lot like U2."

Look at CD again. Read label again. But the Greenday CD has a bomb on the cover, right?

Oh, shit.

Oh. Dear God. I bought that crappy new U2 CD instead of Greenday.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

I've created my own special kind of hell.

Writing Today

Writing today. More after class tonight, perhaps.



"You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy." -Erica Jong

"Let us not confuse stability with stagnation." -Mary Jean LeTendre

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." -Iris Murdoch

"We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are." -Anais Nin

Booked & Paid For

New York, Feb 14-22nd. Well, actually, New Jersey. But I intend to spend a great deal of time on the train.

Up tomorrow morning at the ungodly hour of 4:15am so I can meet Yellow at the train station out here at 7am so that we can drive down to Indy for a project kickoff meeting.

Funny talking to him. I miss Yellow. He needs to come into the office more often. If only so I can check out his shoes.

Snow. More Snow. Bah.

Is it Friday yet?

Nice Guys

oohhhh. This is a good one.

Typhonblue has a rant up about "Nice Guys" vs. "Jerks"... (Hugo has an entirely different rant up about this article, but it triggered way different things for me).

Who would you rather date? (for those of you, fair chiklits, with an interest in dating men).

She has some interesting stuff up, and some good thoughts. But I worry when she says she's happy to have Jerk boyfriend who'll hit her back when she hits him. If you guys are smacking the crap out of each other in anger, you shouldn't be together.

But that's me. I still like to pretend that men and women can be in equal, respectful, loving relationships where they make each other better instead of dragging each other down into a pit of abject despair.

I'm old-fashioned that way.

I constantly hear Nice Guys ranting about how this woman who is just gorgeous, just like a model, is living with this good-looking, unemployed, alcoholic dickwad when she could get any man she wanted. Nice Guys never seem notice that the woman is an unemployed alcoholic dickwad.

Ohhhh boy. Yea. Ain't that the truth.

My buddy Jem: "She seems like such a nice girl. Why is she with that asshole, Kameron?"

Me: "Cause she's an asshole? Stop thinking with your dick and pretending it's your logic."

I have had a good many "nice guy" friends who I got to listen wax on about how amazing some woman was (and in high school, these were usually the "experienced" women - the ones who slept with four or five different guys every year - only, not with them), how "no one else really understands her," how "she's just so sad all the time, so confused, I could help her," how "I don't understand why she comes and talks to me and has sex with him."

Believe me, buddy: it's better for you that she's sleeping with him. They deserve each other. That woman ain't no soft cookie. She'll eat you alive. Or, hell, the one I'm thinking of would have eaten *me* alive, too.

The "all women are goddesses" lament is a problem because it creates a dichotomy. If all women are goddesses, but the goddess doesn't want you, you start to resent women, and "they" get pushed onto the flip side of that, which is "whore."

The problem with worship is what happens when you lose your faith. You tend to want to destroy everything you believed in.

And I've met "Nice Guys" who did that, too.

Nice Guys are incapable of discerning differences in the personality traits of women. Perhaps this is why Nice Guys always bemoan the model-types who date Jerks, rather then the average types who date Jerks. Since all women have the same personality – beatific, angelic, perfect – there is no way Ms. Plain Jane can compete with a beautiful woman for the attention of a Nice Guy via any positive character qualities she might posess. Beauty is the only criteria for judging women in the eyes of a Nice Guy. Thus the Nice Guy’s astounding tendency to complain about how no woman notices him, while a Nice Girl is trying to say hello.

Yep. These are the Nice Guys who'll sit over coffee with me lamenting about all of the amazing women who aren't interested in them, even though they open the door for them and everything. Often, I'll try and sneak something in like, "Maybe if you were employed and had some passion about something, she might look twice at you," but that might be stretching it a little thin with them.

The worst sitting-over-coffee-with-a-nice-guy thing is when you're listening to him moan about how great the hot chick with Major Issues really is (cause he can just see into her soul), while all you really want to do it is leap across the table and have sex with him right there.

Being a not-hot chick with minor issues, you either fall off the Nice Guy radar, or they put you on it as "goddess," and don't treat you like a real person.

And I think that's what the author was really getting at: guys who actually act like themselves, who say, "This is me," and treat you like a real person are the sorts of people you want to hang out with.

Guys who pull on a Nice Guy hood and then bitch because they're moving all of the pieces around and not getting any "reward" for it (like, say, sex), aren't really Nice Guys at all. They just think they are.

Here's where I start to worry about her rant:

Because my Jerk boyfriend doesn’t carry my pack, I’ve gotten that much stronger and more rational about what I pack. Because he doesn’t give me his jacket, I learn to remember it so I have it even when he can’t offer his. Because he doesn’t always drop everything and tend to my emotional ills, I’ve become more independent and capable of tending to them myself. Because he hits me if I hit him, I’m reminded that I’m accountable for my actions. Because he doesn’t reward my bad behavior, he’s helped me mature and grow up.

Cause it's your boyfriend's job to play dad?

The hitting thing bugs me, but there's something to what she says, and here's where I agree: I'd rather I was treated like a human being than an angel. That doesn't mean telling me I'm a fucking loser, stupid, or hitting me. That's not treating me like a human being either.

What is does mean is that if you get me a dozen roses every week when, in fact, I actually don't like roses, you're not actually being all that nice to me (yes, I had somebody who did this). What it means is that you haven't heard a word I've said, and you're getting the roses for yourself, which is great: but don't pretend it's about me. You're living in a fantasyland about the way the dynamics of a "relationship" are supposed to work, not being yourself, and not respecting me (as a side note: it turns out he liked roses, and wouldn't have minded me getting him roses... now, that I can deal with. Shit, guy, tell me these things, OK? No, darling I don't "think it's gay." Damn. This is why communication is important).

And what I see when I look at men who try very hard to be "nice guys" and then wonder why they aren't getting dates with the sorts of women they want (and there are, indeed, some who are indeed quite happy to date women who look like real people), are guys who are trapped in "this is the way it's supposed to be" script.

As nice as that script may work for imaginary women living in fantasyland, you're going to get more affection if instead of playing by a set script, you listen to what the hell she's saying and make some alterations in your "affection" tactics. If she doesn't like flowers, find out what the hell she likes. And - and this is important - if she disrespects you, leave. Because I wouldn't expect a woman to stay with a guy who disrespected her any more than I'd expect a guy to. Cause people are people, and if we can get away with being assholes, most of us probably will. And who the hell really wants to be with somebody who doesn't respect themselves?

I'm obviously carrying around a lot of bias against guys who described themselves as "nice," because when I sit down with them, they sound a lot like martyrs. I used to describe myself as a "nice" girl. But you know, I realized being nice was, in fact, really boring. I got a few dates that way, but they weren't with people who were very interesting, and there was going to come a point where I was going to be who I was, and he would either freak out, or try and get me back to being "nice."

So I don't bitch that I'm not dating anyone because I'm "nice." In fact, I'm not dating anyone by choice - the people who've made inquiries or who I've met haven't done much for me, and I'm not yet at the point where I'm ready to actively pursue.

But I did used to bitch about being nice and unnoticed, so I know where some of these guys are coming from. I know all about what it is to try and play by the script, and not have it work, and not know why.

In my case, it was because I never got to be myself, so I never had any fun, so the guy I was with didn't have much fun (or if he did, it wasn't enough fun for me to continue).

The Nice Guy, while searching for a Goddess, eventually turns into a non-person, too, and might even become somebody he's not so sure he really wants to be.

Find out who you are first, before you go looking for a woman to fill up the void in your life.

You might realize that that was the problem all along.

Weighing in On "Why I'm a Feminist"

This is an old one, but I only recently found it. Check it out.

And So My Schedule Shapes Up

Finally, a project kick-off that will result in actual work. I'll be in Indianapolis on Thursday, heading down with Yellow and Sarah the construction manager. Not an overnight thing, but home late. Meaning I'll have to go jogging Friday night instead of Thursday night. That's OK. I can handle that.

Heading to New Jersey on Monday morning, booking the 14th-22rd (which gives me my New York weekend ha ha - see my sneakiness), unless Mosh uncovers my sneaky New York weekend plan. But I don't think he'll mind. Me staying over a weekend *saves* them money, in the long run. heh heh

Possibly, more New York the first week of March for some training sessions. These people keep investing more and more money in me, like I have a Real Job or something.

It's going to be a busy year.

EDIT: My bosses are all insane. They can't make up their minds. First it's X, then Y, then Z. They better figure out what the hell they want me to do, travel-wise, by the time I leave today, cause you better bet I have no interest in staying here past 3pm, being bored out of my ever-loving mind, and I've got plans to make.

Another Day, Another Roundhouse, Another Bad Right Hook

Had a tough MA class last night. I was frustrated at work, and then showed up to class and wasn't performing at the energy level I really wanted to perform at, and I kept feeling like I was fucking everything up, which launched me into my self-hate talk, which wasn't made any better by the presence of all the mirrors.

Sometimes it just gets to me.

When I got home, I realized how hungry I'd been, and ate, then fell into bed at quarter to nine - realizing how tired I was, and slept right to my alarm at 5:15am.

What amazes me about taking martial arts classes is how much it's about repetition. You do the same things, the same drills, over and over and over again. Then you get corrected on what you're doing wrong. Then you do it over and over again. Then you get corrected again. Then you do it again.

The amazing part about it is that after a while, somebody tells you to do a front kick, a double jab/right cross/left hook, or jab-jab-cross-front kick-roundhouse, and you just sort of do it. You know what they're talking about, and even if the form isn't perfect, you do it.

One of the women taking a trial class last night asked me how long I'd been coming in, and I didn't realize until I said it, "Eight months," that that's really how long I've been doing this. I was frustrated, again, that I wasn't performing better during that class, knowing how long I've been doing it. She asked how I liked it, and I got to wax on about how much I love my martial arts school, how nice everyone is, how great Sifu Kat is, how it's worth every bloody penny (and it's a lot of pennies), how my confidence has improved, how it only took two weeks before I started seeing muscles, increase in strength and stamina. And as an afterthought (she wasn't thin), I added that I'd also dropped a couple of sizes.

But I realized that bit was indeed at the end of my list. Sort of an added bonus.

I've talked a lot about how frustrating my weight has been for me, especially since I'm used to crash dieting and crash binging, jumping alarmingly up and down the scale as I please. And during class, I know that one of the big motivators for my self-hate talk were those mirrors.

And I don't know when I'm going to come to grips with my body. Every time I think I've nailed it again, everytime I think, "This is the last time I'm going to bitch about myself," I'll have a low day, and my record gets stuck.

Because I know that at a size 20 or a size 12, I have the same view of myself. My body gets smaller, but retains the same shape. I will never been thin, I will never be boyish-looking. I will never dye my hair blonde. I will never get a boob job. And no matter how much I get irritated with my body, I'll never get liposuction.

I have resolved to like myself just as I am while striving to be the best person *I* can be, not the best person hair dye and scalpels can make me, because ultimately, what scalpels do is make you look like everybody else. They don't make you look like you.

I have bad moments. I get frustrated. I want to punch in the mirror and scream at it, "How can I be working so goddamn hard and still look like *this*?"

Last night, talking with the woman taking the trial class, who was not thin, who had been working her butt off in class with us and kept up pretty damn well, she mentioned she'd been working out with a personal trainer for a year.

She, like me, did not look like she'd been working her ass off for a year.

And I wondered, "How many of us are there? These incredibly strong, healthy women who eat well and exercise and are going to live until they're a hundred and twelve, who are being told there's something wrong with their bodies when in fact, there's nothing wrong with them at all? When in fact, they're some of the healthiest people you'd ever meet, and the only thing eating them up every night is worry over why it is their hips continue to carry around baby-making weight when the last thing they really want is babies?"

I have amazing genetics. Despite the fact that some of them treat themselves like shit (no exercise/crap diet/alcoholic), we live for an amazingly long time. Going by genetics alone, unless I get cancer or get hit by a bus, I'll live at least into my nineties, and probably pretty far into that. And I'll do it with these goddamn hips.

And maybe that's the worst part of the self-hate talk, those self-hate moments, because that night, pulling on me sweat pants and tank top for bed, I looked in the mirror and realized that I, personally, really did actually like myself. That I didn't mind the flair of the hips, or the fact that I could stand to lose 25lbs. I didn't mind being curvy and solid.

The reason I was so stressed out in class was because I was with a bunch of other people who we're thinner and/or stronger than I was. I was with a group of people who could possibly be judging me, and for anybody who's ever identified as a fat girl, you know how worried you can get when exercising en mass. Thinking, "I'm too fat to perform well," meant me not performing as well, meant me tripping up, meant me falling into the hate-talk spiral.

This morning I rolled out of bed, well-rested, with a pleasant ache from class, and got dressed in new shirt, my brown jacket, my favorite jeans. Put on that French perfume, got my hair right - and startled myself when I looked in the mirror.

Because I like the way I look. No, I'm not perfect. And no, I don't look like everyone else. Yes, yes, I told myself as I looked, I can stand to lose 25lbs, and I'm doing that this year, slowly, like a reasonable person, because that's my set weight, and that's where my body's headed. But right now, that person staring back at me, that body, is really OK. Seriously. Really. You look like yourself. And that's not mean or bad or ugly or evil. It's just you. You look like you. And you're not a bad person.

Stop. With. The. Self. Hate. Talk.

Dammit. Just... stop.

Why do you constantly care about what other people think? Why do you constantly break yourself down before they get a chance to?

One of the survival tactics I developed in the 6th grade, when I experienced the worst of grade-school harrassment, was to find out all of my faults and think up the worst insults they could result in *before* my tormentors did so. It made me very good at finding all of the things "wrong" with me.

Later, as I got older and started pining after impossible guys who weren't interested in me, I'd try and figure out what about me I was supposed to change in order to be loved, in order to be liked.

What I realized later was that the moment I liked myself, the moment I stopped caring about what everyone else thought, the more I stood up for myself and said, "Yep. Here. This is who I am, and I like being this way," the more people were drawn to me, the more people wanted to hang out with me.

Self-confidence is a powerful thing, and I know that I had one good friend bitch at me because of that confidence when I was first discovering it as a high school freshman.

He insisted I was becoming arrogant, I was becoming "a bitch..." What I later learned was that this "friend" of mine was upset that I wasn't spending as much time with him, that my newfound confidence meant I could expand my social circle and not rely on his "counsel."

Add that to the fact that I spent some time being "trained" and then spent down time in a household full of self-hate talk, and what you end up with is a woman staring into the mirror who's constantly at war with herself.

One day, I remember I really like the way I look, and fuck all you fuckers, the next day I get pissed off because I'm not "thin enough," which in the US is now equated with being "good enough." Not just in an attractive sense, but in a literal moral sense. Being overweight is being seen as a sign of moral decay. You're lazy, decadent, give in too much to your desires.

And I think of that woman in my MA class who was seeing a personal trainer, I think of myself, who's not only running twice a week and going to three MA classes a week and working with free weights every morning, watching what I eat, but I'd been doing those free weights and light cardio for six months *before* I started the classes, and before that, even though I was eating crappy and taking crappy care of myself, I was still doing light exercise regularly. And *before that* - except for a couple crappy six month periods - I spent two years in Alaska and a year before Alaska actually being somewhat active and paying attention to what I ate.

And I think: I'm going to outlive everyone. I'm going to be a size 14 and outlive everybody, and I'm going to be able to kick their asses, and unless I stand up for myself, and stop fucking hating myself, I'm the only person who's going to know that.

If I get pissed off at what I see in the mirror, they'll see it and get pissed off, too. If I can't even treat myself with some kind of respect, I can't expect anyone else to do so.

I need less bad days. I need less self-hate talk. I need to alter my default.

It's one day at a time. It's never over. Some days are just better than others.

And you deal with that. And you get up, and you go again.

Conversations With My Roommate

As I don’t actually do anything here all day, and Jenn is a procrastinator, we often send e-mail back and forth to bide our time.

Yesterday, she sent me this clip of “a man saving a gazelle.” I was unimpressed, and did not respond.

Several hours later, this conversation ensued:

Jenn: Do you not love the man saving the gazelle? Is he not excellent?

Me: You realize that though the gazelle was saved, the Cheetah now goes hungry.

Jenn: Screw the cheetahs and their oppressive regime! Do they value freedom? Do their people have liberty? Do they know SCIENCE? We should invade their country and overthrow their evil dictator, then give gazelles the vote!

All we have to do is send a small unit of our troops in to rescue the gazelles, just as that lone citizen did - this will spark a revolution that spread like wildfire! Soon you will see a coalition of the willing charging in to save the gazelles - our soldiers will be sprinting alongside wildebeests, elephants, caffeinated sloths, and the occasional arctic moose!

Me: Oh, Jenn.

Jenn: I am offended by your patronizing tone, my roommate. The men and women of this country could do worse than getting out there every once in a while to rescue the odd gazelle.

Me: I just don't think I have anything to say to that. I mean, really. You know, cheetahs have spots. Like giraffes.

Jenn: I'm sure that lily-livered Brendan is a cheetah sympathizer, then. We'll have to keep an eye on him.

Moral of the story: watch out for the cheetah sympathizers.

I have the Best. Friends. Ever.

Hopping into Bed With Somebody of the Same Sex Means You're Bad With Money

Oh, boy. Wow. I love professors.

I'm not even going to tell you how much better pretty much everybody I know is with money, compared to me: but let me tell you, who they go to bed with every night (or every year, or on a good weekend) has nothing to do with how well they spend their money or how much they put into savings. Like, at all.

I want to see this guy's scientific studies. I want your raw data, your control group, dickwad.

I could make up some "generalities" about dumb-ass, old white male professors, and how great they are at sticking their feet in their mouths and playing holier-than-thou, but I'm not going to to do it, because though it may be "generally" true, what kind of half-assed "studies" or "theories" do I have to go on?

Why, none. So I won't walk into a classroom and tell them you're an asshole cause you were born white, male, and mostly straight.

via Positive Liberty, who talks more about it.

Do Women With Fake Breasts Live Longer?

What a fucktard.

Who the fuck elected this guy? Who cast their vote for him? I really, really want to meet these people. I imagine that they are utterly fascinating individuals.

Someone Else's Thoughts on Attraction & Desire

Nice post by ActivistGradGirl about desire and attraction, which I may have linked to before, but which I've recently re-read, and still like very much.

I love examining desire and attraction, because not only are they deeply personal respones, but they're also unique to each person. It's one of the reasons I've always hated sexuality labels, and the ways in which we're allowed to talk about sex. There's a dialogue we aren't really allowed to have, when we try to pretend that desire and attraction are exactly the same across the board.

Most Excellent

You Are the Very Gay Peppermint Patty!

Softball is the huge tipoff here... As well as a "best friend" who loves to call her "sir"

What Gay Childhood Icon Are You?

What I'm Doing Today at the Wacky Office

Using Streets & Trips to map out where our NJ office is in relation to Manhatten. Waiting around for Blaine to let me know if they'll need me to go to a meeting in Indianapolis at the end of this week. Waiting on making my plane ticket reservations for New York until Mosh decides if he wants me there for one week or three (I'll settle at a week and a half - three's too much).

Rereading e-mails and blogs. Staring at book 2. Thinking I really should finish that painter story.

Wondering how it is I get paid for this.

I'm going to go play Antz.

I'm Thinking I Need Another Job.. Again

This is just ridiculous.

So, Let Me Get this Straight: The Woman Gets Demoted, The Men Don't?

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- A female member of a National Guard military police unit was demoted for indecent exposure after a mud-wrestling party at the Army-run Camp Bucca detention center in Iraq, a military spokesman said Sunday.

This was apparently a mixed-sex affair. What's the deal? Was she the only one to bare her breasts? Something tells me the boys were going topless, too.

You know, men have nipples. It's scary.

You can shoot a man and kill him honey, but don't show your tits. Don't hang with the boys. Don't try and have fun. Go sit in the back and remind everybody about how "special" you are for having breasts.

NY Marriage Decision Roundup

A lot of people are taking notes on this one, but here's a good roundup from Alas, A Blog:

(New York City) A New York State court ruled Friday that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry.

State Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan said that the New York State Constitution guarantees basic freedoms to lesbian and gay people, and that those rights are violated when same-sex couples are not allowed to marry.

The ruling said the state Constitution requires same-sex couples to have equal access to marriage, and that the couples represented by Lambda Legal must be given marriage licenses.

And, as a reminder:

Of particular note to feminists: she points out that the logic of “you can’t change traditional marriage,” if taken seriously, would have prevented courts from outlawing marital rape.

We're all in this together, guys.

Gotta Love Those Obsolete Feminists

You know, it's not funny. I mean, if it was funny, that would be something. But it's not funny.

Somebody Else's Rant

Stolen from vanbrosia at the LJ Feminist Forum:

--------------------------
So I went to an Automobile Expo yesterday.

I knew what to expect. I knew that there would be female staff there hired to look pretty.

However, I expected adult women to be the staff. What I saw was barely-adult, near-anorexic, pale, and very scantly clad girls in stillettoes. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they were sixteen. They were so thin that bones were sticking out, ribs could be counted, and they were so pale they looked like they were ill. Half of them weren't even there to help with the cars; they were just there to stand and look pretty.

Geez, why not use cardboard cutouts? One shiney pretty object next to all the other shiney metal objects?

It prompted this exchance between me and my dad.

Dad: There's something I don't get, though.
Me: What?
Dad: I read an article once that said it's women who buy the most cars. And there's an equal 50-50 of men and women here. So why are all these girls here?
Me: Sexism, dad.
Dad: *sigh* Yeah, I bet that's true.
--------------------------

Oh, Shit.

Democracy will be great for women in Iraq. Really, really great.

With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly, leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution.

Exactly how Islamic to make the document is the subject of debate.

At the very least, the clerics say, the constitution should ensure that legal measures overseeing personal matters like marriage, divorce and family inheritance fall under Shariah, or Koranic law. For example, daughters would receive half the inheritances of sons under that law.

On other issues, opinion varies, with the more conservative leaders insisting that Shariah be the foundation for all legislation.

Oh, shit.

via blondesense

Fit, Fat, Feminism, and Carnivale

Season One of Carnivale -- SPOILERS

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Watched the episode of Carnivale the other night where Dora Mae, one of the dancers/part-time prostitutes is raped and killed in the mining town of Babylon (a violence done off screen, thankfully - I've been wacky with violence-against-women on screen since South Africa; it tends to scare the crap out of me).

She has the word "harlot" inscribed on her forehead, and we're told that the reason she was killed is because all those who are killed in Babylon... stay in Babylon. And the miners killed in Babylon, who only appear at night... were lonely.

Sampson, who runs the Carnivale, goes into town and does in the guy who killed her, and then walks out as the sun is setting.... and he sees Dora Mae standing naked in the window of one of the barracks-like houses, half-obscured in darkness.

They chose an actress for this part who looks the part of a woman; she's not one of those androgynous "beauties" of the 20s, wearing girdles to mask hips, or one of the "tits, ass, but no fat anywhere else" ideals today. She's fleshy, big in the hips and big-breasted (real breasts). It's a good "beauty" choice for the time period - the 1930s, during the Great Depression - when being well-fed and womanly meant you were likely very healthy and well-off. Women who looked the most "like women" were the ideal.

And this very classicaly woman-shaped woman stares lifelessly out of this window as the sun is going down, and one of the coal miners comes up slowly from behind her and hooks his arm around her throat... And he slowly pulls her back away from the window and into the darkness.

And there's this look of pity and sorrow and terror on Sampson's face, and he walks away, knowing there's nothing he can do, knowing that she's been co-opted by this place; a woman, a thing, to be owned, to be used.

It creeped me the fuck out.

I kept thinking about that scene all night, again that morning, again on the train, and after watching another episode last night, Jenn brought it up. I told her it freaked me the fuck out, which she found funny, because at the time when we watched it, I had gone utterly quiet and still and hadn't commented on it. It was one of those fear responses that was so intense I literally could not speak for fear of the sound of the terror creeping out in my voice.

It's men viewing this woman, this human being, as a thing, an object, that they can kill and keep for their own pleasure. Really creepy.

And it got me to thinking about my own love/hate relationship with my own body image. Because, as I've often talked about, I look like very much like a woman. If I wear baggy clothes and put my hair up and go into a butch walk, people might wonder a bit if I went by fast, but mostly, I've always had that woman's body - fleshy in the hips and thighs, pulled in at the waist, and though I'm not big-breasted, I am broad-shouldered, which means I do have an hourglass-type thing going on.

I remember Jenn coming into my room one day, bitching about a shirt that was too big for her, as it made her body look tube-like - she's small-breasted as well, and narrow in the hips, so if she wears a shirt that's too big, she looks a bit boyish.

I laughed at her and said, "I love finding pants and shirts that make me appear tube-like - then I know that I'm thinner, as I've gained the ability to hide the fact that I have hips." In fact, the most prized pants I own are pants that pull me in at the hips instead of accentuating them.

I've talked before about how the two times in my life where I was adamently trying to dissuade male attention were the times when I put on the most weight, thinking that would make me less attractive. This works in the US, now that our beauty standard isn't a fleshy one. It didn't work so well in South Africa. Being a fleshy woman is a desirable thing in Zulu culture, and is also a sign of health in a country rapidly watching its people waste away with AIDS. The couple of times I was hit on there, it was by Zulu men.

So though I was certainly operating on a "What makes an attractive woman" template both times, it didn't work so well the second time, because beauty standards are different in different places and change constantly. We're very much conditioned about what "beauty" is. So all that insulation only made those humid 105-degree days in Durban all that much more unbearable.

But watching that scene in Carnivale, I was reminded of why I fear having this woman's body, and why there's so much angst about it. On the one hand, I'd certainly like to be seen as attractive, as desirable, but I don't want the unwanted attention that comes with such desirability. I don't want even more people harrassing me on the train. I don't want people seeing "sex" on my body - by sheer virtue of the way my body is made! - and assuming that gives them a right to get up in my personal space.

One of the ways I'm combating this association of greater attractiveness (ie being thin, being fit; in this culture) with more harrassment is by taking self-defense classes, and teaching myself that being thinner doesn't neccessarily mean being weaker, and just because I start to get a more socially acceptable shape doesn't mean I'm somehow inviting more trouble. It doesn't mean that I owe anybody anything.

Sexual power is a funny thing to contemplate for somebody who has never really viewed themselves as attractive. Yet I know I've driven at least a couple of people crazy, and been desired enough to convince people to do things they knew they shouldn't have done. I'm not gorgeous, I'm not traditionally beautiful, but there is something that attracts certain sorts of people, and I'm aware of it. I've heard the Greek goddess talk one too many times.

So when I see this incredibly powerful woman getting co-opted by these men because they desire her, because she bears the body she was born with, I can't help but feel a stinging fear as I watch her get pulled into the darkness. It's not so long ago that women were considered things to be bought and sold, and in some places, we're still considered commodities, and hell, Jessica Simpson gave her dad a "virginity vow." We're not that far removed from woman-as-thing or woman's-worth-is-her-untouched-cunt. It's scary shit.

There are a great deal of things that keep drawing me back to Carnivale, the portrayal of women and men and the relationships between and among them being part of it. They've got an incredible bunch of character actors. Nobody's plastic-beautiful; you become attracted to them by sheer virtue of their actual characters, by the quirks, by watching those things about them that aren't so beautiful and finding the things that are.

I've ranted about other shows that keep fucking up their gender dynamics, whose actors appear to be deeply confused about what it is they're trying to say. With Carnivale, you start out with archetypes: the psychic, the bearded lady, the midget, the strongman, the snake charmer, the girls who dance "the cooch"... and every single one of them walks into the scene with their own set of issues, their own histories, their own power dynamics and relationships with the other characters, and at every point along the way, the ways that they interact feel true.

I realized during yesterday's viewing that I was watching a lot of sex scenes, this being an HBO production, and that in fact, they were all really great sex scenes. I didn't feel like anybody was being taken advantage of, or that women's bodies were being shown off just to be shown off (though I'd like more male nudity, at least on par with that of the women, but that's me). These feel like real people to me, drawn to each other for their own individual reasons, and it's not cheap and brainless. You can watch these people circle one another, and watch the ramifications of their actions play out.

It's not so much about eye candy as it is about telling a damn good story - and sex is part of life, and part of this story.

It's this place where nobody's perfect and you manage to fall in love with nearly everybody on some level; which, perhaps, was why the co-option of Dora Mae by men who saw her not as a real person, but a thing, was that much more powerful.

I'm Not Setting Enough Men On Fire, Apparently. I Mean, Literally. Need to Work On That

I'm getting there. I don't suck, but I've got a ways to go.
I need to set more people on fire.

Damn.

Inspiring Verse For Your Sunday Morning

"And the LORD spake unto Noah, saying 'Verily, this is the last fucking time I shop at Ikea; I have no idea which way round this bit goes. Cover thine eyes, lest thou be blinded; I shall use My powers to build thy ark from moonbeams.' And Noah said 'Lord, is that not cheating?' And the LORD said 'Unless My Adversary has given thee gills while My attention was elsewhere, thou shalt be fishfood soon without My aid; now either shut the fuck up and cover thine eyes, or I shall leave thee here amidst the unassembled debris and drown the whole bloody lot of you.' And Noah grew afraid, and fell to his knees and begged forgivenness; and the LORD's heart softened towards Noah, and He said 'It is not thy fault, o beloved servant; it is Mine, and Ikea's. Fucking Ikea. Now cover thine eyes.' And Noah did, and the LORD did create an ark from moonbeams; and the animals went aboard, two by two, and as they did so the LORD made a note to cover Sweden in really harsh winters for their offences in his sight."

- The Book of Tooltime, 3:15

Read some more

Someday, I Will Be a Super Ninja

Just not today.

Really gotta get into habituating that boxing class *after* the pilates class. For some reason, I've only managed to make both classes work at once, like, three times.

Tack something else up on the "things I need to work on" board. But hey - good news is, this is the first week I've managed all of my scheduled workout days; shirked boxing class aside (I was just pleased I managed to roll out of bed and get downtown).

Cooking, cleaning, groceries, throwing out crappy clothes from the closet. Spending the rest of the day catching up on my reading and watching Carnivale (this is a damn fine show). Ready to relax and have a weekend.

Oh, and here's a little something from Jenn. Fuck only knows how she finds this stuff: Ghetto Rocky - Eye of the Tiger, European Style. For your Saturday amusement.

Good Night, Chiklits

Ah. Warms my heart.

thanks, Greg

Or... Not

Or, I won't watch Carnivale, as Jenn appears to have taken it over to her SO's.

Goddammit.

Episode 40: In Search of the Khaki Pants

I've just spent the last four hours shopping for clothes and shoes.

I hate shopping with a blind, feiry passion.

For the record, a women's size 11 shoe is a men's size 9, so after spending three hours looking for a fucking decent pair of women's shoes that I wouldn't fall over in and repeatedly getting told that all of the attractive shoes you actually like aren't available in your size, go to Nordstrom Rack and get a cool pair of shoes much like the ones Yellow wears for a reasonable price... ("Y'know Yellow, you're real cute, but your shoes are fucking *hot*").

Finding a pair of khaki pants was just the sort of ordeal I assumed it would be, and I spent an inordinate amount of time in Eddie Bauer with some incredibly helpful sales people who did really seem abashed that they didn't carry the size and cut pants I wanted in a tall.

Also, that suede jacket you've been wanting to buy your whole life but couldn't justify the expense to get? Today's the day to get it. Not as butch as a leather jacket, but damn comfy. Someday, I'll have my own. For now, this will do nicely.

Picked up a new sports bra, new running shoes (it's been years), and a new traveling bag/sports bag... when confronted with two bags of differing sizes, the make-or-break decision was, "Will I be able to fit my boxing gloves and shoes in here?"

And yes, I did find a pair of khaki pants that fit reasonably well and were long enough, though they're too dressy for casual wear. Fine for work, but I mourn my Alaskan cargo pants. Someday, I will find them again.

I seem to be doing a great deal of searching for things I've lost.

After spending the last four hours feeling like a circus freak who can't seem to fit into any manufactured sizes, I'm going to go drink some beer and watch Carnivale.

Oh, shit. And do laundry. And pack for class tomorrow.

Never a dull moment.

Government Launches State News Service

Oh, good! State-run news agencies!

Right out of 1984!

How incredibly quaint. It's like living in Coldwar Russia.

Just wait, give Bush another year, and we'll be back to teaching 50s-style sex education and wearing -- oh, wait. Wait. No, we're just about there already.

Who stole my country? I want it back.

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

Why does it not surprise me that when Yellow was asked on this conference call what four people we needed to widdle down our pool of thirteen Dallas people to, that one of the four people (in addition to himself), that should go... was me.

He was overruled, but I think it's interesting.

So anyhow: I'm out for Dallas, but on for New York.

Oh, Shit

Yellow: Get your shit-kickers and your cowboy hat, we're going to Dallas.

Me: What the hell is this Dallas thing? Nobody said anything to me about it.

Yellow: You didn't get the e-mail from Mosh?

Me: Shit, no, nobody -- oh, shit, I didn't... oh

I didn't even bother opening up my work e-mail this morning. That's how little work I've actually been doing here in the office.

Open work e-mail...

Oh, shit. They've already made my hotel reservations. Dallas early next week, a meeting in New Jersey/New York at the end of the week... conference call this morning to see who's doing the New Jersey leg (oh, hell, just fly me out!).

This is the weirdest job. Sit on your ass for two weeks and then... GO!

To Reiterate:

1) There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

2) Social Security will implode tomorrow, even if we don't steal all that money in order to pay off our war debts. Which we are NOT going to do.

3) The gays are not real Americans, and want to sodomize your children (though how or why the lesbians want to go about this, we're still unclear on)

4) Abortion isn't about controlling women, it's about protecting life, which is why we have such great childcare programs for welfare mothers

5) We are NOT, I repeat, NOT going to war with Iran.

Why is it I feel so cynical?

Way To Start Your "Workday" Morning

...dumping half a container of instant creamer into your coffee.

Oops.

I'm so happy it's Friday.

Jogging

I think I'm just awestruck.

I've spent the last six months trying to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong, why I couldn't do the amount of workouts that I wanted, why my energy was so low, and I was getting increasingly twitchy.

Gosh, could it be because I was in famine-mode, and exhibiting that classic freak-out behavior found in that study about men put on 1500-1800 calorie diets?

Came home, hopping around, thinking, "Jogging! Jogging! Jogging is great! It's *only* three miles! I get to listen to Everclear! Yay!"

And did my three miles pretty easily, and started pushing my pacing. I'd like to stay at three miles for awhile, and just increase the pace as I increase my strength and endurance. I have tomorrow off, then my MA class on Saturday, and I'll have completed my first ideal workout week.

Fricking amazing.

I've also been on a real Everclear kick, the same six songs or so from Sparkle & Fade, and I'm not sure what that's about. Everclear is very much a small town highschool memory sort of band for me. I mean, Everclear: encouraging kids to get out of shitty towns, shitty relationships, and ditch their shitty record store jobs... for at least the last ten years...

Funny, how much driving energy I find in it.

The Hours

Dude. This is going to be a dangerous, dangerous medium for me.

I'm going to have waaaaaaaay too much fun.

More Thoughts on Audio Blogging

Figured out what I wanted to do with this feature, and I'll try it out tonight by reading a passage from The Hours. Long distance phone calls are never a problem for me, as I've got phone cards (ah, having family on the West Coast), so this should be fun.

So, sorta like a "here's what I'm reading tonight" thing. Might be fun to post once or twice a week. And, of course, it will make for fun Friday night movie rants....

Just make sure you've got your speakers turned down. These things tend to play at full volume.

Neat-o. I love these great toys.

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

Well, it was either Zoe or Jayne.


You are Zoe. While most others see you as a
stone-cold bitch and yes.woman to the captain,
you can be both a loving wife and quite
emotional - though you never let it show.


Which Firefly character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

A Superhero And a Dinosaur Talk About Sex in a Public School

Randomly generate story ideas!

A serial killer holds a slumber party in a restaurant.

A courtesy clerk, a terminally-ill chef, and a racist priest practice an act for a talent show in a subway station.

A zoo keeper goes swimming with a psychic-powered serial killer in the jungle.

Good, clean, fun.

Don't Be An Asshole

I'm always fascinated to watch people who've never had to really work for a living interacting with waitstaff, cashiers, and retailers.

There's this sort of weird classist thing going on - like "those" people are lesser, for having that job, for getting paid $5.45 an hour to wipe your kid's smeared shit from the restaurant tabletop, like they're stupider than you are, like they have no other aspirations, and if they really don't have other aspirations, that that makes you somehow better.

It got even weirder when I found myself as the member of a hoity-toity group of executives who did a corporate dinner down in Indianapolis. I had a much greater loyalty and affection for the waitresses, but I was pretty fucked from the moment I sat down, cause I wasn't "one of them" anymore, I was "one of the enemy."

Oh, we hate our customers. Oh, yes. I remember. For every sweetheart who leaves you a ten dollar bill on a bad day, there's the couple with six kids who smear mashed potatoes all over the tabletop and leave you four pennies.

My parents were burger flippers. They started working behind the grill and the counter at the local burger joint when they were 16 and 17, respectively. They came home smelling like burger grease, smeared oil and dusted in the remnants of hamburger buns. It's a not unpleasant smell to me, actually, and I have fond memories when I walk into the backrooms of fast-food restaurants, as I spent a good deal of time in those places. And it means I'm also well aware of how people get treated in food service. People assume you're stupid. They assume that nobody there takes pride in what they do. And that's a load of shit.

It was very important for my parents to instill in me a good work ethic. They showed up to work on weekends and holidays, and I have fond memories of hanging out at the burger joint while my mom mopped floors on Christmas Eve. This was what you did. You did everything the way it was supposed to be done. You didn't shirk the floor on Christmas Eve, or any other day.

My parents would come home and talk about the people they knew at work. The managers, area managers, my parents' fellow employees, were a bit like an extended family. They would hash out the latest goings-on, compare notes about how well their stores did when they became managers, when they became area managers. When they became VPs, most of the talk was of corporate crap, and they didn't come home smelling like grease as often, but my dad was still in the back flipping burgers for store openings, making up new burger ideas, and loving every minute of it, and my mom would come in and make a batch of fries and mop up somebody's floor, and chat with the employees and let them know how valued they were. Cause they were people. And they were amazing people who had amazing stories.

There were women who'd come in after being housewives for years, and never had a job in their life, and this was it, and they took such incredible pride in what they did. And there were dumb teenagers who often stole money to pay their cell phone bills, and had to be let go. And there were other women coming out of bad marriages, divorces, and men coming out of divorces, and people who'd had life shit on them, and were using this to get through, or move on, on the way to anywhere.

There were petty arguments and stupid resentments and in-fighting and sexual harrassment and love affairs and fast food. And these were the people I hung out with, the people my parents befriended. And they were real people, with real problems, and they worked their goddamn asses off every goddamn day to make ends meet.

When I was sixteen, I got a cushy admin job in the corp. office, having parents who were VPs, and having been in and out of the fast-food joints my whole life. I understood the business, I understood the people, I liked being there. I started at minimum wage and within about six months, went from making copies to running the behind-the-scenes set-up work for employee training sessions and company events, hauling training materials back and forth, interacting with hotel staff and organizing box lunches. I copyedited training manuals. I started writing a company newsletter.

For a number of different reasons, my mother was let go from the company ("Choose between your marriage or your job"), and my dad told them all to fuck off the next day.

My parents were never really the same after that, because for 25 years, this place, these people, had been their entire life. They had talked of nothing else. They had spent all of their time, their effort, their energy, invested in this company, in these people, and they passionately believed in making it better.

Afterwards, I went through a number of different jobs. I've worked behind the counter at a health food store, worked collecting ticket money and behind the concession stand at a movie theatre; I spent six months cleaning dog kennels on weekends at the local vet clinic, I worked as a file clerk at a medical center, I've done some of the most insane work at a weekend catering business where I ran around with people engaging in the best of guerilla food terrorism, and I have been a hostess and waitress at a low-end restaurant chain where I was looked at by customers with an IQ half that of mine as being no more than the dirt beneath their shoes. And I smiled and was nice to them for my four pennies. I have worked in a call center at an electronics seller during Christmas time and had people scream at me, hang up, bitch about holiday orders. I've found fraudsters and cancelled orders and learned how to pick up a phone every two minutes and be incredibly polite to the next caller after being shouted out by the one before. I have done temp work, office drudgery, research. I've made a handful of dollars selling short, violent fiction.

And there has been a strange disconnect for me now, realizing that when I come up to the receptionist's desk at the hotel, in my suit jacket and nice shoes, carrying my corporate card, that I'm not "one of us" - I'm "one of them." They're paid to be nice to me and put up with my bullshit. When you're lucky, you can bust down the power divide and connect with them - sometimes the telemarketer calls and I can hear it in the background, I can remember that little office cubicle I had, can remember how crappy it was to cold call people to verify orders and have them pissed off because they thought you were a solicitor. I remember the phone, every two minutes. I remember this is a person sitting exactly where I was, and if we're both in a good mood, you can connect, I can say, "No thanks, dude, I used to do what you do. I totally understand," and he goes, "It sucks," and I say, "I know. Have a good night, OK? Hang in there."

Because they're busting their asses and getting bitched at for $8 an hour. And I've been there.

I don't bitch about my waitstaff. I don't make unreasonable demands. I tip well. I do this because I've been there, because I've been dirt fucking poor trying to make it on tips, had my phone cut off, been worried about paying the electric bill. I've been in that place. I know what it's like.

And that's why I always get so goddamn irritated with people who forget that the people paid to serve them may not actually like them, in fact, may loathe them, and that endearing themselves to that person is not about making their night worse by demanding that they acknowledge how smart and witty you are, or bow to your demands so that you can feel better than them.

They just want to make money and go home. Be nice to your waitstaff. Be nice to the people on the other end of the phone.

That's you. Could be you. Was you. Might be you.

Don't be an asshole.

Gender, Narcissism, and Masturbation

My friends love to bait me.

Jenn burst into my room last weekend and said, "Have you read anything by Norman Mailer?"

When I admitted I hadn't, Jenn broke out Mailer's "Thoughts on Writing" collection The Spooky Art, and proceeded to read aloud key passages she'd bookmarked just for me.

She then photocopied and highlighted these passages.

Oh, yea. It's that good.

Let me share:

"When your prime character is a man, the key choice is not how bright he is, because however smart, he can't be more intelligent than you are. That's easy. You dumb him down to taste or bring him up to your level.

This way, all of your characters can be male and God-like, like you.

"The real question is, How tough is he?"

Truly, one of life's great questions.

"Do you have the inner sanction to create a man who's braver and tougher than yourself? The answer is yes. Contra Hemingway - yes! You can do that by exercising your critical imagination. It must not be about wish fulfillment! You are entitled to guess how you might act if you were that much more of a hero."

Only write about characters just like you. Only, tougher. Tougher! You in a trenchcoat! You being the writer, of course. A MAN.

No, no, we're not talking about women - look:

"I don't know how to pose the question for an author who's female. Can she, for example, write about a woman who is more sensitive than herself?"

Cause fuck knows she can't write about a woman tougher than she is! Why the hell would she want to do that! But wait, it gets better --

"Probably not."

Probably not! Women have no imagination!

"She could write about a woman who uses her sensitivity and sensibility more than herself, because she can then key on all the frustrated times in her existence when the sensitivity and sensibility she possessed were not appropriate to a harsh occasion."

Did he just contradict himself? I don't know. I was busy being sensitive. That is, using my sensitivity to make myself more sensible, or a character more sensible, a female one, or something like that.

"Following question: Can a woman write about another woman more passionate than herself? Probably."

Women=sex. Women=understanding of passion. Good, good, Norman. Look, he'll throw us a bone! After all, he must have talked to thousands upon thousands of women writers to come up with this hypothesis! I bet he's not just talking out his ass. After all, he's a Famous Writer!

"Or a woman who's colder than herself? Without doubt."

All women are cold, evil bitches at heart, so they can write about cold characters. But she can't write about anybody more sensitive than she is. And she'll never want to write about anybody tougher than she is, because that would be too much like what men are allowed to write.

"If you believe in fiction, if you believe in the power of the novelist, then all subjects are possible. Of course, certain choices present more obstructions than others. It would be harder, as an example, for a male novelist to learn about the small irritations of a woman's day than to imagine what her sex would be like. A novelistic element in sex, after all, is the feeling of nearness to the Other. It's one of the most compelling reasons for sex precisely because such sentiments live almost entirely outside formal sacraments and private codes. It may be indeed why pious people so often feel driven to break their own deepest sexual prohibitions. It's because the experience of meeting the Other is incomparable."

What if you're a lesbian?

Oh, I forgot. Lesbians don't have sex. But you know, honestly, if I wanted to have sex with "the Other" I'd fuck a outside the species. C'mon, can we move past the "women are amazing, lithe, crystalline figurines who don't shit" and acknowledge that one of the great things about sex is coming together with somebody else? You know, a person. Not a plastic doll?

"Which is why I say it's easier - if you are going to write about the opposite gender - to limn them sexually than attempt to get into the nitty gritty of their daily life."

It appears that Norman subscribes to the Heinleinian school of female character creation.

"Another word on gender."

Oh, please, go on.

"Women certainly have every right to create men at war, but I think it might be recognized that it's likely to be less comfortable for them. War, after all, is essentially a male invention."

Women have never had to fight for anything. They never encouraged men to fight. They didn't pass out white feathers to civilian men in WWI, attempting to shame them into going to war. Women have never supported wars. Have never seen the necessity for war. Women don't have anything to do with war at all. Women are all naturally pacifists and don't get caught up patriotic fevor at all.

"How often have women show the same inventiveness and hellishness that men have in war?"

Slooooooooooooooow SCREAM.

"How can they approach that near-psychotic mix of proportion and disproportion which is at the heart of mortal combat?"

Maybe when they were giving birth, you know, during those days when 1 in 4 women died giving birth to a kid. You know, the life/death battle. Women have never seen none of that shit.

"On the other hand, if we ask whether men and women can write equally about bravery, I would say yes."

Oh, thank god. But wait!!

"How are we to define bravery, after all? Take a woman who is awfully timid - let's say she was terrorized through her childhood. She has an all-too-acute awareness of how bad things can come upon you suddenly. When she's an old lady and every bone in her body is aching, it may be an act of courage for her to cross a busy street all by herself. She doesn't know if she can make it across before the lights change, yet she has to do it. For her own honor, if you will. And she does it. That may be more brave, given the relative situation, than the bold act of a soldier who's been trained to be courageous, who is bonded to the soldiers he is with, who lives with the idea that there's no disgrace in life worse than not being up to the military occasion."

I would say something along the lines of, "I don't think this man has ever spoken to a woman in his life," but he was apparently married for years and years. Maybe they didn't talk. Something tells me that if he asked twenty women what the bravest thing they'd ever done was (and talked to lower-class women), it wouldn't be, "Crossing the street."

"So a woman can certainly write about brave soldiers, even though she's not the least bit brave, not at that level. Of course, she has to have an immense talent."

Of course. Women aren't naturally good writers. There are those select few that get put up on pedestals as model examples of just how rare it is that women are actually talented.

"I've often thought that Joyce Carol Oates, who is a very talented woman, will often, on the basis of a small bit of experience, write a six-hundred page novel. I think she's an arch example of someone who does almost all of it through talent."

The rest is dumb luck.

"She's willing to dare terrible humiliation. The irony is that she is rarely attacked."

She is, after all, a woman, and Famous Writers Like Me enjoy patting her on the head. She is no threat to us.

"I expect she arouses a fundamental if somewhat bemused respect in many a mean spirit."

Bemused respect. Bemused. Joyce, you're so damn funny when you write six hundred pages of text that has periods and everything!

And here are some of his thoughts on the writing of DH Lawrence:

"Indeed, which case-hardened guerrilla of Women's Liberation might not shed a private tear at the following passage (of DH Lawrence's):

`And if you're in Scotland and I'm in the Midlands, and I can't put my arms around you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I've got something of you. My soul softly flap in the little pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it's a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace the comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause of peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow...'

Yes, which stout partisan of the Liberation would read such words and not go soft for the memory of some bitter bridge of love she had burned behind. Lawrence was dangerous."

Dude, if I was getting laid like that, I wouldn't have burned the bridge. But you know, I long for the days when women like me were called, "case-hardened guerrilla(s) of Women's Liberation." I want to be a case-hardened guerilla of women's liberation! Bring it on, Lawrence, you dangerous bastard! Think of all the guerilla fucking we would do. Beautiful.

And now, the really weird part. What, you thought it didn't get weirder. Oh, my chiklits! Now Norman talks about his favorite vice: Masturbation!

PK: Do you think you're something of a puritan when it comes to masturbation?

Norman: I think masturbation is bad.

That about sums it up. Next question?

PK: In relation to heterosexual fulfillment?

Norman: In relation to everything - orgasm, heterosexuality, to style, to stance, to being able to fight the good fight. I think masturbation turns people askew. It sets up a bad and often enduring tension. Anybody who spends his adolescence masturbating generally enter his young manhood with no sense of being a man.

The fuck?

PK: Is it possible you have a totalitarian attitude toward masturbation?

Norman: I'm saying it's a miserable activity.

...for me. I get really confused. All those parts, all the same. It's like being gay. And I'm not gay.

PK: Well, were' getting right back to absolutes. You know - to some, masturbation can be a think of beauty.

Norman: To what end? Who is going to benefit from it? Masturbation is bombing oneself.

Like a blitzkrieg of the self. Like invading Poland. If you're Polish.

PK: I think there's a basic flaw in your argument. Why are you assuming that masturbation is violence unto oneself? Why is it not pleasure unto oneself? And I'm not defending masturbation - well, I'm defending masturbation, yes, as a substitute if and when -

Norman: All right, look. When you make love, whatever is good in you or bad in your goes out into someone else.

Women absorb it, like sponges. They're great like that.

"I mean this literally."

Seriously.

"I'm not interested in the biochemistry of it nor in how the psychic waves are passed back and forth."

As psychic waves are wont to do.

"All I know is that when one makes love, one changes a woman slightly and a woman changes you slightly - "

Unless it's gay sex, which doesn't count. I'm not gay. Have I mentioned that yet in this interview? Not gay.

PK: Certain circumstances can change one for the worse.

Norman: But at least you have gone through a process which is part of life.

Unless it's gay.

"One can be better for the experience, or worse. But one has experience to absorb, to think about, one has literally to digest the new spirit that has entered the flesh."

Just make sure she swallows.

"The body has been galvanized for an experience of flesh, a declaration of the flesh. If one has the courage to think about every aspect of the act - I don't mean think mechanically about it - "

Cause then you might learn something.

"but if one is able to brood over the act, to dwell on it, then one is changed by the act."

There's nothing hotter than a guy pausing midthrust, staring out over your head, brow furrowed, while he contemplates Norman Mailer. Norman thinks it's pretty hot, too.

"Because in the act of restoring one's harmony, one has to encounter all of the reasons one was jangled. So finally, one has to experience which was nourishing. Nourishing because one is able to feel one's way into more difficult or more precious insights as a result of it. One's able to live a tougher, more heroic life if one can digest and absorb the experience."

He's back on the "tough, heroic" thing again. Sex is incredibly heroic, for men, but only if they think a lot about it. Otherwise, it's like masturbation.

No, I don't understand it either.

"But if one masturbates -"

Yep, we're back on this one again.

"all that happens is, everything that's beautiful and good in one goes up the hand, goes into the air, is lost."

Lost, like the survivors of a plane crash, fighting polar bears, learning how to walk, forming budding romances and hiding Terrible Secrets while learning French... oh, I'm sorry, wrong rant.

"Now, what the hell is there to absorb?"

Your own semen? Isn't that gay?

"One hasn't tested oneself."

Sex with women is a battle. That sounds healthy.

"You see, in a way, the heterosexual act lay questions to rest and makes one able to build upon a few answers. Whereas if one masturbates, the ability to contemplate one's experience is disturbed. Fantasies of power take over and disturb all sleep. If one has, for example, the image of a beautiful, sexy babe in masturbation, one still doesn't know whether one can make lover to her in the flesh. All you know is that you can have her in your brain. Well, a lot of good that is."

Women exist to be made love to. You must prove your manliness by conquering hot babes and fucking them while pausing, on occasion, to contemplate the act of absorption and the brilliance of Norman Mailer. You can't just settle for fantasizing about that hot babe who thinks you're a freak and wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole, you've got to go out there and go after her - with a pitchfork, if need be - to prove that your manly organ can go in its rightful place.

"But if one has fought the good fight -"

More fighting, again. Sex is war, after all. Not that women would know anything about war.

"or the evil fight and ended with the beautiful, sexy dame, then whether the experience is good or bad, your life is changed by it."

Hers probably will be, too. She might get herpes from you. Or get pregnant and kicked out of school. But we're really not interested in her. It's about the battle. I mean, you fought the good fight, you're a man. Just think, you could have stayed home masturbating and not forced yourself and your attentions on anyone at all! What kind of a man would you have been, then? Huh? Huh?

"The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity --"

Ah. The 50s.

"the ultimate direction, mind you, not the immediate likelihood."

Well, that's good to know. Masturbation today - insanity tomorrow.

"I was asked whether these remarks apply to women --"

Oh, sweet Jesus.

"and realized that I did not know the answer."

Having never spoken to a woman in my life.

"It strikes me that masturbation, for a variety of reasons, does not affect the female psyche directly."

Only indirectly? Like second-hand smoke?

"A male friend of mine remarked, "Since you've been married all your adult life, you don't know the true extent of the problem."

I feel so incredibly sorry for this man's wives. He doesn't know the difference between sex and masturbation. So every time he wants to get off, it's "Roll over, honey."

The difference between sex and masturbation is that with sex, you're with another person, it's about coming together with another person. Masturbation is, yes, about you, about pleasure, about getting off and going to bed.

And yes, there's a difference. And there are all sorts of men who've been banged on the head with the "if you want to get off, it's better to have sex than masturbate." Well, yea, it's good to have sex if what you're looking for is being with that person, cause you know, there's two of you involved. Way too many men approach sex like masturbation, and believe they're the only ones there.

It's no surprise that he's been married six times.

This guy needs to fucking relax....

And there's your introduction to Norman Mailer!!

Yet another Old White Male Writer who should really be included more in the Canon, as he speaks so well for all men - and especially their women! - with a deep, penetrating understanding of the core humanity in each of us.

Have I Mentioned Lately How Much I Love My MA School?

I love my MA school! I love all the cute newbies and their dinky weights! I love that the new guys come in and assume they can do everything with thirty pound weights and then have to stop halfway through and move to fifteen! I love it! They're adorable!

That's right, my chiklits, add 500 calories to your diet, and you, too, Might Just Feel Better and write a blog post full of exclamation marks! Stop it with the self-hate talk! Eat more apples! Feel better! Kick more ass!

I despise the dieting industry. They can eat shit and die.

Starve yourself so you look like an Olsen Twin! Everyone knows that eating less is good for you! Why should we give you calorie counts for *active* women! Women don't go out and kick ass! Women stay home and hate themselves for having hips!

No, no, eat less, so you'll have less energy, so you'll miss workouts, so you'll feel depressed, so you'll get a prescription for Prozac, so you'll have no sex drive, so your SO thinks you don't find them attractive any more, so you buy all of Dr. Phil's books, so you can only afford to binge eat at fast food places, so you can hire a lawyer to sue McDonald's and CNN can write a "news" story about it!

This is America!

Those dirty fuckers can kiss my ass.

I feel great! The world is beautiful! I've gotten in jogging days and MA school days, and I feel great! I am bouncing off the walls. The only reason I'm not out running is because if I don't get at least 8 hours of sleep, I crash and burn. Bad. Must sleep.

But the world is great! I love everyone! I'm going to go jogging tomorrow, and go to class on Saturday! And it will be great!

Why should we give out calorie counts for active women!! Women don't want to be active! They sit at home and starve, just like good little girls!

Fucktards.

Good night, chiklits!

Writing Today

See you after MA class, perhaps.



"Well-behaved women seldom make history."
-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Things I Hate About My Flatmate

I'm so, so lucky that I have a good roommate.

Drunk Dialing Meets Drunk Blog Posting! This is Excellent!

Oh, sweet fuck. It just occurred to me, listening to some other sites with audio posts:

I can combine the best of Drunk Dialing with Drunk Blog Posting.

Oh, the shenanigans!!!

This entire media form was made just for me! Post your slurred, drunken rants to your blog at four am on Valentine's Day!

Yay!!!

Before You Go Banging On Your Drum, Step Back a Minute. It's All About Context

On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny.

Why the fuck don't we fucking teach people history in schools? Fucking shit, we'd avoid so many repeat propaganda fuck-ups.

Read the rest.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

No shit. It's too bad I'm not more of a talker, but you know, a couple times a month I could see myself calling... myself, to bitch.

And you could all share in the fun!

Just think: long, bitchy rants from me, in my voice! With the proper intonation for "fucktard"!

So great.

The Latest on Battlestar Galactica

This Could Quite Possible Be the Best Show Ever.

But, it's not.

Cause the Scifi channel keeps fucking it up.

The premise is this: humanity is being systematically wiped out by "Cylons" - robots who come in several designs, some of them human. As most of their planets have been blown to bits, that last 50,000 humans in the galaxy (so far as they know), have formed a fleet of ships and are trying to outrun the Cylons while looking for a mythical "Earth" that they can settle down on.

There are things I love about this show. I love the end of the world stuff: the few against the Dark Forces of Evil. I love that in the episode "33" everybody's exhausted and looks like shit and they film all the interior shots with handhelds. I love that people are bitchy and confused and nobody knows what the hell's going on. I love that when the fighter pilots go out to Do Battle, they pass by a picture of a guy watching one of their cities bombed-out by Cylons - a reminder about what you're fighting for. I love the deck they've got that's a memorial to all the dead, all the pictures, the little momentos. I like that they, did, in fact, make an attempt to have a female character who outranks a male character have an affair with him...

... They fuck it up, but their heart was in it.

This is a show about genocide on a mass scale, and lots of very different people trying to work together, and a Faceless Evil to combat. Fucking Classic, right?

The Sci-fi channel toted the gender ratio on this show as being a big deal. It's a quasi-remake of the original Battlestar Galactica, and one of the show's favorite characters - the philandering, cigar smoking star fighter, Starbuck - is now being played by a woman.

There are, however, only four main female characters. Which, you know, considering there's only five or six male main characters, shouldn't seem so bad.

But.

But half of the female main characters are robots.

Seriously.

I shit you not.

Half the female characters in this show aren't supposed to be real women.

Fuckers.

I bet they think they're being "progressive."

Read any Golden-Age SF, much?

Worse, the one with the most screen time - the Evil Blond in the Red Dress - doesn't really do anything but make-out with the scientist guy. There's lots of Hot Blonde Cylon Skin for the 14-year-old boys in the audience, but not much substance. Just lots of scenes where she's breathily expositing nonesense about belief and redemption. In fact, the entire subplot of an entire episode consisted of the Cylon making out with the scientist.

Somebody over at Sci-fi doing a little wish fulfillment, much?

For the most part, the gender ratio on-camera is about 1/3 to 1/4 female, not 1/2, though if you're not paying attention, you may think it's half, because we're so not used to seeing women characters on screen.

They appear to have the best of intentions with doing this, but they keep fucking it up.

Some of the actors appear to be confused about What it All Means, too. There are weird scenes where you get these women deferring to the guys around them in weird ways - or sometimes they do, sometimes they don't - sometimes they seem confused during their scenes about whether they're attacking or defending, seeking approval or telling the guy to fuck off.

Starbuck starts to bitch out her commanding officer, who's also supposed to be her best friend (way too much "but shouldn't we play up the sexual tension between them" stuff for them to be best friends, but I digress), and she gets a little hysterical with it. Granted, they're all supposed to be frazzled at this point, but you know what - he didn't get hysterical. Boomer does the same thing when, in another episode, she blasts out a freak-out confession to her boyfriend (who she outranks), and he immediately goes into male-protector mode, and she goes into female freak-out mode and begs for him to "fix" everything.

This, after insisting that these were strong, smart women. And sure, even strong, smart women have freakouts - but you know what, you don't go hysterical in front of a commanding officer, and you can figure out how to "fix" something on your own without coercing the boyfriend who you outrank to cover everything up for you. These women are supposed to be smarter than that.

The hottest person in the whole damn show is definately Starbuck. She's fucking hot: not just in a "looks" way (because if you're too pretty you get points deducted, in my book - I need a little character in the face, not a plastic doll), but the way she talks, the way she walks, the way she holds herself. She's awesome. She's the only one who's got any real spit and fire to her - only she seems to switch from "butch" mode to "now I must be a seductive girl" mode rather too often for my personal taste.

Can't she just be ass-kicking Starbuck and have people like her anyway? Does she really need to wear a low-cut tank top (way lower cut that any body else's in the room) while she's kicking everybody's ass at poker? Does she even need to bother to pretend to defer to the scientist guy? Why doesn't she just find him amusing? Katee Sackhoff needs to take a couple of classes in the Joanna Russ school of feminism.... That would be so cool.

And you know there's this war going on: the director's saying, "These are tough women, but they haven't lost touch with their femininity! More femininity!" Which, somehow, actually means (to this director at least), "Show us that you really need male approval!"

Finally, the male characters defend the female characters a lot from verbal attacks by superior officers. You know, it's a fucking military setting. Getting chewed out by your superior is par for the fucking course. Get over it, you pansies. Again, this wouldn't be an issue if 1) the verbal attacks in question were without merit (in fact, they felt perfectly within limits to me, totally justified, and real) 2) if men were defending other men or women defending other women from such "attacks" in the same way.

Instead, you're sort of seeing this supposedly military-run ship tiptoeing around the women aboard it.

And it's really, deeply, stupid. Because you couldn't function effectively that way, if 1/3 of your crew got "special" treatment by virtue of having breasts. It would piss off everybody - male and female. And before you start arguing about women in the military now, let me remind you that this is supposed to be, like, 3000 years in the future. I'd certainly hope thoughts about what women could be and do and equal relationships between the sexes had improved somewhat by then.

But then, I'm a bit of an optimist SF/F writer, huh.

There's also this weird tension between the Battlestar commander (a man) and the President (a woman). He'll usually just make decisions without her input, like when to jump the fleet, who to attack, when to attack, what's best for everyone, but when it comes to, say, deciding whether or not to leave a lot of people behind, or kill dangerous people, she has to make the decision, even if those people are seen as a military threat.

I love the actress they've got playing the President, and I think she rocks the house, but you know, it's weird. The writers' decisions about when something becomes "her" decision, and when it's "his" seem decided merely based on how suspenseful it'll be. If you want suspense, you have him ask her what she's decided. If you want to move the plot, he just decides on his own.

Really random.

And for all my pissed off bitching, I do keep hoping it'll get better. I keep hoping that Starbuck will really come into her own, that maybe the cardboard too-pretty guy they've got opposite her will somehow develop an actual character, that just because Boomer is a robot doesn't mean she'll be an Evil Robot, that the fucking Cylon in the Red Dress gets blown up for spare parts really soon, that the twitchy scientist guy gets pushed out an airlock, that the President clearly states, "Here's when it's mine. Here's when it's yours," and that at some point, there's an actual likeable guy character who isn't 1) too-pretty and devoid of personality 2) a robot.

Which is like the same thing, I guess.

It's Bullshit, But it Pleases Me

I have no trust in these studies, because there are so many other factors at work, but reading this stuff always pleases me:

Not only red wine but also white wine, beer and hard liquor appear to protect against mental decline in older women, two new studies have found.

I'm going to live forever!

Good Stuff From Amanda

The Republicans have simply stolen the standard way Hollywood sells movies, which is bring in the men and the women will follow. The idea in selling movies is this: Stuff your movies full of good-looking women and violence, market directly to young men and they will drag their girlfriends to see it. And the girlfriends will go, because women are used to male authority in their lives.

The Republicans do the same thing. The Shrub is packaged up for maximum effect on a male audience. His rotating gallery of superhero costumes should be the first clue, as should the very existence of Ann Coulter, with her mini-skirts and her willingness to say nasty things about other women any chance she gets. The Stepford wife of a First Lady should really cause alarm bells to go off. The Republican party has been conveying a straightfoward, coherent message to the men of this country for a long time now, and that message is that they understand that men need to be Men and that the Democrats, in conjunction with the feminists, are trying to emasculate the men of this country. And that gets projected onto the nation as a whole--I would go so far as to say that 9/11 is perceived by many conservative voters as the result of our nation's "emasculation", that we became womanly and vulnerable and as such were violated.

I'm particularly pleased with the Laura Bush/Stepford equation. That one finally clicked. Wow. Read the rest.

My Secret Boyfriend Talks About Drugs, Alcohol, and Terrorism

Amusing thoughts from the other side of the pond.

Understanding the Religious Right

A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

via Echidne

Aren't There Any Bad Girl Poets?

Bad Guys and poetry:

In response to the question, “Can a bad man be a good poet?” there are only two things to be said: “Yes” and “obviously.” In part, that's because the poetry world sets the bar fairly low for “badness” — when we say a poet was a “bad man,” we don't mean that he was a shotgun-toting, baby-kicking monster; we mean that he was unpleasant, disturbed, or a jerk. And considering that poetry’s history is thick with unpleasant, disturbed jerks, the question would seem to answer itself.

He does, in fact, get around to talking about Anne Sexton for about two lines, but only to insist that it's impossible for a reader to "see themselves" in Sexton's poems, so it's different, somehow, to be shocked by her... I'm wondering if he means "a reader" to be "a male reader like me." Huh.

via Julian

Why is it Supposed to be So Much Worse When Women Do It?

Torture is torture. I'm so incredibly irritated that the "big freakout" about the abuse being dealt out to Iraqi prisoners isn't that it's happening, but that some of it's being dealt out by women.

No fucking shit. Women are people too. Women can do awful, mean, terrible things. And yea, it was probably men who told them to do it in some cases, but you know what, a lot of the time, they probably felt that what they were doing was "patriotic."

Women are Americans, too. Women were pissed off about 9/11, too. They felt they were serving their fucking country by interrogating people and treating them inhumanely, by working off religious taboos, by playing with sex. They were doing shitty things that their fellow male soldiers were doing, too. That's what you do. That's war. That's torture. Anybody who thought this isn't what they fucking voted for is wrong.

No, people shouldn't torture other people. It's fucking rude, whether you're male or female. Don't preach at me like women are supposed to be all "superior," and that it's perfectly fine for men to sodomize prisoners, but a woman rubbing her tits against some guy is oh-so-much-more-scandalous.

It's shitty no matter who's doing it. Stop freaking out based on the sex of the perpetrator, and talk about it for what it is: a bunch of Americans feeling that they were doing the right thing, being given orders by an administration who finds the Geneva Convention's anti-torture articles incredibly quaint.