Again, Funny Women Freak Guys Out

It's called reversal. Some people think that it's just hysterically funny--the shit that men do to women. Problem is, it stops being funny when it happens to them. It's not funny, dammit! When it happens to men, it's a human rights violation. When it happens to women, it's just....background. It's normal. Sexism will always be with us. Why do you keep whining, complaining, making people uncomfortable? Why do you let it bother you? Come on, it's not that bad, as it? Go look at women in Saudi Arabia! Why are you so ungrateful?

Thoughts on Medicated Depression

The problem with being somebody like me, who is very clear about what works regarding dealing with my "low" days or holiday freakouts, is that when I'm confronted with a serious depression that's actually caused by my reaction to a new birth control pill, I try to "treat" the medicated depression the same way I deal with my low days.... you know, eat right, exercise, try to figure out what it is that's really bothering you. Depression is a message, right?

Yea: IT MEANS THAT THE PILL YOU'RE TAKING REALLY SUCKS.

Which is, of course, the big problem with depression. If you can't physically get up and get out of bed for anything but bare survival (and keep hitting your alarm every morning, when you've never, ever, not in the entire year you've had this 5:15am job, ever hit the alarm in the morning and skipped your weight routine), then it's very difficult to deal with "low" days the way you're used to. About all you can do is crawl into bed when you get home and maybe get some reading done.

Now that I'm back to myself again, I'm starting to realize just how bad it was getting. I figured out what the problem was when I started to burst into tears at weird moments, like on the bus, at work. Hysterical tears for no real reason.

The rest of the stuff - the low energy, the lack of willpower - I could tack up to sheer laziness, or the stress from traveling a month or so ago, or the stress of figuring out what I was doing next, or the stress from being so sick dealing with the *other* consequences of the bc pill. But the weepiness I remembered from when I was a teenager first getting hopped up on hormones.

The great thing about being older - and getting off the pill for six years and then on it again - is that it was pretty obvious to me what was wrong, and instead of trying to continue to pawn it off as just me being "hysterical" or freaked-out, I can call it for what it is: my body's reaction to synthetic hormones.

And my body reacted with a really freaky, really nasty depression.

It's a funny thing, because it's not like I lacked the will to do things, it's just that it felt like there was this gray gauze between my will to do things and the part of me that was actually consciously doing (or not-doing) things, and every day I'd get home and my will would tap-tap me about going jogging, about not eating those fries, about going to MA class, and it's like the conscious part of me just wasn't picking it up. Just wasn't reacting. Like there's something that kept those parts of my brain from actually talking to each other properly. I got pretty disconnected from everything else around me. It's like stuff was going on, and I was aware that time was passing, but I was having trouble really connecting with everything around me.

On Monday, I was taking my usual walk at the nature preserve, and I was like, "Wow! It's spring! When did that happen!" and I actually went around, like, touching trees and stuff. Everything was so bright and shiny.

It was fucking weird, to realize just how out of it I'd been.

Getting up in the morning this week, doing my regular weights routine, hasn't been like pulling teeth, even though I've been staying up talking to B until past 10pm, my usual oh-shit-I'm-going-feel-like-crap-tomorrow-if-I-don't-go-to-bed time.

I decided Monday that I'd start turning my nature preserve walk into a 40-minute power walk, and I'd bring an extra set of clothes into work (I'd jog it, but we still don't have a shower here in the office, so I compromised), and start on Tuesday.

And, suddenly, unlike all the other shit I've been trying to do the last couple months that's been so fucking hard, like ripping something out of myself so I don't feel even worse about myself, I went home, packed my clothes, and did the power walk yesterday, and will continue today, and wow, hey, all the sudden I can really *do* stuff again, without feeling like I'm pushing through a gray curtain!

What bugs me the most about this is that I'm such a stubborn bitch. If I hadn't experienced pretty much *all* of the side-effects related to this birth control pill (depression, nausea, breakthrough bleeding, yeast infection [FROM HELL], weight gain/increased appetite), I would have probably just let the depression thing go. I might have done the adoloscent thing and just been like, "Well, you know, I'm just feeling really low. I did a lot of traveling, I'm not happy with my job, I'm starting a new relationship, I'm not sure where I'll be living in a year, I don't know what to do, I haven't been writing anything, things are just really shitty right now."

And I might have just let it go, because, hey, it was "just" depression! I'd just deal with it the way I always had, and everything would be great! Right!?

Problem was, I could track it. I could say, "It's been about two months, actually, that I've felt this way."

And the connection was just so blaringly in-my-face obvious that I had to make the connection: I started the pill two months ago. I couldn't shrug that off.

And, to be honest, a low period lasting that long was really, really scary, cause there's always that fear that maybe it's *not* the pill, and you'll be stuck that way forever.

In any case, it was a great learning experience, not only for the future, but for the way I view my past. I remember starting the pill when I was 16 and bursting into tears at work one day (in front of my boss, no less), and thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with me?" and moving through a crappy relationship like some sort of zombie.

The pill has always worked for me: no pregnancy! Yay! But it's exacerbated my own occastional tendency to have low days, and it's turned low days into one long sweeping period of gray fog interspersed with that 7-day-no-pill breather period that's just long enough for you to think, "I'm being silly! There's nothing wrong with me!"

Problem was, being the stubborn bitch I am, I never connected the dots when I was younger. Three years of freakouts. Wow. And I didn't even question it. I just told myself I was a hysterical idiot freakshow, and that's just the way things were.

Wow.

It's so great to be back in the world again.

Full of fucktards as it may be.....

Oh, For Fuck's Sake

But in one sense, contraception may indeed be the new abortion -- that is, the next battleground for reproductive rights.

I feel like I'm living in a really, really bad SF novel.

Open Letter to the Fuckers (and friend) I Owe Money To:

Dear Corporate Visa Fucktards:

Why, yes, I realize my corporate card account balance is more than 30 days past due. In fact, it stresses me out, too! It would be a great thing if my fucking employers actually reimbursed me on time, so that I could pay you expediantly and not continue to fuck up my already fucked up credit rating.

Believe me, I would love to pay you so that I didn't have to *pay* late charges incurred because my company is full of accounting snobs, late charges that are not, in fact, reimbursed!

Oh, how I would love to pay you!

But I am a lowly fucking admin, I have no money in savings, and you are just one of many, many people I owe a significant amount of money to.

In fact, you're the luckiest of the bunch, because you will, in fact, get paid within the next four weeks, when the payroll snobs get their shit together and give me my goddamn money back.

Someday, I will have a real job that pays me real money. Today is not that day.

Sincerely Yours,

Corporate Slave

___________________

Dear Great Lakes Student Loan Fucktards:

Why yes, I realize that my fucking student loan payment is due the 20th of every month. Did you fuckers look through your fucking accounts and notice that *I pay you every single month by the end of every month* before you started leaving pissed-off "you fucking owe us money" messages on my machine?

Have I missed a payment in the last year?

Why, fuck, no I haven't!

In fact, your fucking check went in the fucking mail today, so you can kiss my ass.

Sincerely yours,

Super Bitch

__________________

Dear Dell,

Yea. I lost last month's payment.

Sue me.

Your check's in the mail.

Sincerely Me,

Kameron the Great

____________________

Dear Jenn,

Yea. Sorry. You can cash the check tomorrow.

- Kameron
_____________________


The beat goes on.

Serenity

Yay!

All my friends are together again!

Chicago SF Signing

There's a big group signing here in Chicago on Sunday, May 1st at the Borders on State Street, downtown.

Signers include Cory Doctorow, Kevin J. Anderson, Lois McMaster Bujold, Eric Flint, Janis Ian, Geoffrey Landis, Todd McCaffrey, Jack McDevitt, Rebecca Moesta Anderson, Mike Resnick, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Steven H Silver, Laurel Winter and W.R. Yates.

When: Sunday, May 1, 11AM-1PM

Where: Borders, 150 North State Street, Chicago, IL (312.606.0750)

Good Morning, Chiklits

Yum. Coffee.

Reminds me I'm alive.

Fun stuff:

Penguins - the next terrorist threat!

Hô Xuân Hu'o'ng

And:

But since 1980, the two groups have taken diverging paths. Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979.

What, you mean, smart, older, wiser people generally make better marriage decisions? No way! Marry `em young, when they don't know any better.

::snort::

Not a study you're going to see toted around next Valentine's Day.

(thanks, Jenn)

My Favorite Phone Call of The Day

Yellow calling me from the scoping meeting with the client and having me walk the client through their own site tracking system so that they can access the files I've uploaded onto their server.

Ah. Corporate America. Nobody has any idea what they're doing.

Oh, Canada

OTTAWA - Women in Canada should soon have access to the morning-after pill without a doctor's prescription.

The drug levonorgestrel, sold under the brand name Plan B, has been approved for sale directly from pharmacies, Health Canada confirmed Wednesday.

Which, of course, begs the question: if we could do an over-the-counter plan B deal in the US, would we then have check-out clerks who refused to sell you plan B for "moral reasons"?

And yet, we've got people selling liquor and tobacco products. Oh, yes, tobacco kills! What about the Culture of Life!!??. How can those check-out clerks *sleep* at night!!!

But shit, pharmacists are hopping over the line all over the place.

This isn't what I signed up for. Where's my rights? I think we all need a little lesson of the "not everybody thinks like I do" variety.

Think of the amazing peace, love, and understanding that would engender.

Pretty scary.

Stealing is Bad.

This is just great. Makes me want to be a University prof.

Jenn, you might be able to use this one someday....

There Were More Terrorist Attacks Worldwide in 2004 Than in 1985

HAHAHAHahahahahhahahhahah haahahaha hahah

via SistersTalk

The Update: Still Employed, Almost Not-Sick, Still in Workout Limbo, Still in Writing Limbo, Still... Alive

Finally trekked into PP and said, "Do I just have a Super Yeast Infection from Hell, or what?"

And she's like, "Yea, you just have a Super Yeast Infection from Hell. Here's some Super Medication. Get yourself some over the counter treatment next time right away instead of waiting a week hoping it'll just go away, cause otherwise, it does what it's been doing, lingering and recurring when you're stressed."

Yea.

I seem to have beat this year's sinus problems as well now, but only just. Starting to feel totally human again. It's been a long time.

Also getting off the pill and getting an IUD next Friday, which'll help the depression upsurge, the mood swings, the breakthrough bleeding, lower sex drive, and all-around wackiness I've been dealing with since I got it (oh yes, you all realize, *this* is why it's been so quiet at Brutal Women lately). Between sicknesses of various kinds and general wackiness, I just haven't had the energy to write full-blown rants. My workout schedule crashed and burned, and I need to fucking get back to my fucking MA classes. I'm barely keeping a healthy diet together.

I also found out I owe the equivalent of 1/3 my monthly income in taxes.

For fuck's sake.

My body's stressed out about what I'll be doing after this next year - I still plan to take the LSATs, but more and more, I'm concerned about that path. All I fucking want to do is write books. Do I want to add 100K of debt and have all my free time taken up with law? Yea, it'd be fun to learn - if I could afford it and if it didn't suck the rest of my life from me. More and more, I just want to move to a new city, get a job, and write. Or continue on in this city, and write. But money's a big issue, and I don't do well living on my own. Yea, I can live by myself: I just notice that I do a lot better, mentally, living with other people.

So it's a concern. I'm mulling it over. Things seem to be sliding back into place, but it's taking a long time. I have a year to figure my shit out.

Looking forward to Wiscon at the end of next month. Looking forward to time away from this brain-numbing job.

Looking... forward. In the mean time, things'll be a little off around here. I'm considering shutting down the blog all together, because I think it takes away from my real writing. The alternative is to just continue with these shorter linkage-posts, which are easy, and rant when I feel like ranting, but not make a production out of it. I just don't have the time.

We'll see how it pans out.

Yes, this is my City

They should be selling tickets on e-bay, you know:



All hail... the druid?

Playing Dress-Up With Wes Anderson

I love people.

via boingboing

How to Score With Chicks (and Real Women, Too)

Nicky counts `em down:

1. Don't be the biggest loser in the whole fucking world

and so on.

Eat Well and Exercise Regularly, but Still "Fat"? Guess What, You're Probably Healthy! Just the Way You Felt All Along!

Got three different taps this mornings about this article in the NY Times (thanks Jenn, B and Maureen!) about the latest, most extensive study done on the relationship between "fat" and "health."

And guess the fuck what?

People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.

and:

And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said.

Well, yea.

Here's the take from the AP version of the story at Alas, A Blog.

I'm going to live forever. Just look in my refrigerator.

Not at my pants size.

Fucktards.

Or, to sum up:

"The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight."

Music & Writing

James Schellenberg, new columnist at Strange Horizons, has got a piece up in the latest issue where he's quizzed a handful of writers about their music-listening habits while writing.

Oddly enough, James asked for my own take on the subject, and it's sorta cool to see me listed up there with Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, Louise Marley, Nalo Hopkinson, Maureen McHugh and Suzy McKee Charnas.

Most excellent. Go check it out.

Drugs & Depression

Depression, in our culture, is what tuberculosis was 100 years ago: illness that signifies refinement.

Good Things

Deana Carter's CD The Story of My Life. That whole thing United Airlines has, where they play the same four songs from the same six CDs over and over in constant rotation throughout their flights for months on end? Works really well to lure business travelers into buying said CDs...

Michael Faber's incredibly cool and creepy Under the Skin, a book about a female human-looking creature who goes out and picks up male hitchhikers and... well, you'll just have to read it and find out. Deeply creepy, very good. Definately my kind of book.

Chicago's Riveria Theatre, right around the corner from my house. Went to a Westerberg concert there on Friday with B, and had a good time. The acoustics aren't great, but it's a neat venue. Next time, I'm going to buy lots of beer, too. There's just something about a smoke-filled rock concert that makes one want to consume large quantities of alcohol...

Good Morning, Chiklits

Ah, yes, enjoyed a nice, relaxing weekend, arrived comfortably late to work in order to catch up on some sleeping, and am enjoying an absolutely great warm sunny Spring day. The leaves are on the trees, the flowers are blooming, my basil is spouting, and I didn't over-creamer my coffee this morning.

Excellent.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

I'm so leaving early today. As you all can see, the workplace has fried my brain, and there will be nothing but mostly fluff, links, and very little commentary beyond "FUCKTARDS!!" for the rest of the day...

Oh, For Fuck's Sake

Here we go again.

Let's get over this sex thing, OK? We'll lead, happier, healthier lives that way.

Sheesh.

Friday Beer Blogging

OH, YES, OH YES, I'VE MADE IT TO FRIIIIIIDAAAAYYY!

What a bastard of a week.

Random Pirate Blogging

Because you can only do about 30 hours worth of uploading onto a client's server before you go batshit crazy.

Pirate Relationships!

Pirate Poem!

Moon Pirate!

Pirates for Dummies!

Pirate legos were the best!

Arizona

Gov. Janet Napolitano on Wednesday vetoed a bill to let pharmacists refuse to provide abortion-related medications if doing so conflicts with the pharmacists' moral or religious beliefs.

tap.

It is Another Beautiful Day, My Chiklits

Picked up some writing music yesterday, as work on my stand-alone novel (was "Jihad," now is the more all-inclusive "God's War") petered out earlier this year and needs to get back on track so I can have a finished book by year's end.

Going through the library catalogue to get more research books. There's jack shit at the public library, but Jenn's got access to the Northwestern U library, which is a great resource.

Also typing up a story I've started working on longhand, which I'd like to get in the mail at the end of the month. I've gotta get some new stuff out. I feel like I'm drowning, and I know a lot of my low-feeling the last few months has to do with the fact that not much fiction's getting written while my job's been throwing me around the country and the rejection slips have been piling up. Creating new worlds, running through stories, I just feel a hell of a lot better when I'm doing it. I've gotten sidetracked, discouraged, and it's time to get better.

I think getting the second agent reject for the fantasy novel (only two actually asked for the 50 pages - the rest were flat rejects) really bit me. Sometimes, you just want to stay low for awhile, clear out your system, before you start again. I've been losing a lot of my self confidence.

And still, I write. And submit.

Cause if I'm gonna do it anyway, I want to get paid for it.

These Days, Even the Cookie Monster Has an Eating Disorder, Redux

If you're not familiar with Cookie Monster, he's a muppet with an unhealthy obsession with cookies. He completely lacks self control when it comes to his favorite food and often gets himself into trouble because he'll do just about anything for a cookie.

For the past three decades the Cookie Monster has been the monstrous embodiment of gluttony. He has, in other words, always taught children about healthy eating habits.

And now we're dumbing down our television programming even further. Assuming kids won't "get it."

Gosh, it's great to be a stupid Amurikan.

The Real Reason They Don't Like Women Competing Against Men: Cause the Women can Win

...at 10 years old, Makeba Elliott, an honor student at Blackhawk Elementary in Park Forest, has won two consecutive boys' state wrestling championships. Last month, the Park Forest fifth grader -- whose quickest takedown was in 18 seconds -- ended a 54-5 season by taking top honors in the boys' 2005 Midget State Championship. She also won the boys' midget championship in 2004.

But my favorite part is:

Makeba has also been a trailblazer for female athletes at her school. When Blackhawk Elementary was forming a basketball team last year, school officials told Makeba she couldn't join because basketball was for boys and cheerleading was for girls, her father said. Makeba responded by writing a letter to the principal that persuaded him to allow girls on the team, and Makeba now plays point guard.

I Really Must Get Myself Some Religion

Just think of all the work I wouldn't have to do!

A Proper Brutal Woman's Bag

You know, I don't carry a purse, but I sure could see myself toting one of these to my next shindig.

BlogHer Conference

via boingboing

BlogHer: Woman-centered blogger con, Sta Clara, Jul 30

The BlogHer conference is a woman-centric conference on blogging to be held on July 30 in Santa Clara, CA:

BlogHer Conference '05 will provide an open, inclusive forum to:

1. Discuss the role of women within the larger blog community
2. Examine the developing (and debatable) code of blogging ethics
3. Discover how blogging is shrinking the world and amplifying the voices of women worldwide

All Your Base Are Belong To Us!

“At Last, You Could Become America's Next Best Selling Author and Reality Show TV Celebrity!”

You know, when we were at Clarion, the idea of a "Clarion Reality TV" series came up - for about three seconds.

SF writers - in fact, writers in general - are not the world's most beautiful people. We're just not. You'd have to fall in love with us the way you fall in love with the characters on Carnivale. We're not plastic people. Our sex is very messy; especially the sort that goes on at Clarions.

And, you know, writers write. We spend most of our time actually hunched in front of keyboards, screaming, "Fucktard!" or laughing maniacally every few hours.

That's about it. Nick's rant about the glam writer's lifestyle, here.

What's that I've Been Saying, Again?

The study found that having obese parents, suffering from depression, and engaging in radical dieting like forced vomiting, were all risk factors for future obesity in adulthood.

"Engaging in these radical behaviors isn't going to stop you from being obese," said psychologist Eric Stice, Ph.D., the lead author of the study. "In fact they're likely to do the opposite."

I'm curious, however, why they chose to focus only on girls.

I guess because being a fat woman is just so much grosser and more dangerous. Of course, women are more likely to engage in vomiting and anorexic behavior, leading to greater percentage of obesity? Or not? Without a comparison among teenage boys, this is sort of floating around in nowhere land.

Malicious Public Blasphemy, Coming Soon

A Greek court will rule on whether to allow sales of a cartoon book from Austria depicting Jesus Christ as a drinking buddy of Jimi Hendrix and a marijuana-smoking, naked surfer.

They charged `em with: "Malicious public blasphemy."

Dude, I so want to charged with malicious public blasphemy. Imagine what it would do to my hit count...

Good Morning, Chiklits

Another day, another dollar, again with the too much creamer in my goddamn coffee. It's like drinking milk.

Keira Knightley: Bounty Hunter!

Sweeeeeet.

These Days, Even the Cookie Monster Has an Eating Disorder

Oh dear.

You know, advocating healthy eating is great and all, and you better bet it's something I'm on top of all the time, but shit you guys...

We're breeding a culture of food paranoia. And I think there's a big risk that instead of making things better, it's going to make things worse. It may, in fact, have been making things worse for a while now.

via bfb

What's this a Symbol of, Again?

These are men who think a great deal about their penises; like Mike, they are submerged. But what concerns Dr. Sharlip is why men feel the need to raise the bar in the first place. Of those who come to him for advice, he says, "the very great majority -- 99 percent -- have normal penile size. It's a psychological problem more than a physical one."

Mike denies that his obsessions with enlarging his penis stem from some primordial trauma. "It wasn't a huge emotional drama I was trying to settle," Mike says. "What guy's not going to want to go out and make his dick bigger?"

Wow. The amount of amazing things we could all do with this time and energy...

Wikipedia – first with the news

Cool note on how Wikipedia and feminist blog rings were the first to report on Andrea Dworkin's death. Those pesky internets: moving far faster than the media at large.

It's like a giant game of telephone.

Amp's Thoughts on a Fat Female Cartoon Heroine...

So why couldn’t we have a female character who was a creature of pure Id, whose unruly mounds of fat, like Homer’s, is always threatening to crush the furnature, leak over the sides of all restraints, and just generally refuse to fit in?

Well, I think there could be such a character. If she was well-written, I’d find her funny. But to have a woman be that character… well, it somehow wouldn’t be very status quo, would it? I think a lot of America might find a female version of Homer Simpson or Peter Griffen - that is, an unashamed fat woman whose fat gets everywhere and who unabashedly goes after every passing want - more than a bit threatening. Not exactly the comforting material that successful sit-coms are made of.

Religion in the Workplace

To the Editor:

"Moralists at the Workplace" (editorial, April 3) addressed "scattered reports" of employees refusing to perform certain job requirements that conflict with their personal moral or religious beliefs and customers seeking to have these requirements filled. We believe that there is a solution that accommodates the needs of both parties.

Recently, we introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which clarifies current law to say a person's religious beliefs should be recognized and accommodated in the workplace as long as this does not adversely affect the employer's business or customers.

The bill is supported by a diverse coalition of more than 45 religious and civil rights groups as well as a bipartisan group of senators and representatives.

If the bill becomes law, an employee who does not wish to do their job would not have to do so long as another employee is on duty and would do their job for them.

The Workplace Religious Freedom Act provides a sensible solution to the potential conflict between an employee's religious conviction and the needs of their employer and employer’s customers.

I, for instance, am part of a strict no-technology-using religion similiar to that practiced by the Amish. I work for a telecommunications firm where my job requirements include using computers, telephones, and managing projects that aid in the spread of telecommunications technology, which I do not believe in.

Luckily, thanks to this law, I can come into work everyday and have my coworkers do all of this work for me while I write novels longhand.

I believe this solution accomodates the needs of all parties involved.

Kameron Hurley; AA, BA, MA
http://brutalwomen.blogspot.com

Yellow Says Hello

"Don't worry, Kameron, in the next edition of Webster's, wussify will be a word."

"Is that right?"

"Better yet, you can have someone say it in one of your books. Hey, you can have my character say the word, `wussify,' and then you'll have made up a new word, and you can attribute it to my character. Ha ha."

It's great being back in Chicago.

I Am Eating An Orange

.. it is quite tasty.

I have uploaded something like 300 .jpgs onto the client's server.

Only 900 to go.

It's one of those days.

Another Reason Not to Get a Cell Phone

According to a new global survey, fourteen percent of cell phone users have interrupted screwing to answer their cell phones. Just like Paris Hilton. From Consumer Affairs.com report on a subscription-only Ad Age article:

The highest incidence of cellular interruptus was found in Germany and Spain, where 22 percent of users interrupted sex to answer their cell phones; the lowest was in Italy, where only 7 percent reported doing so. In the U.S., the figure was 15 percent, the magazine said, citing a study conducted by BBDO Worldwide and Proximity Worldwide.

via boingboing

Unitarian Jihad Name Generator

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Nunchuku of Enlightened Compassion.

Get yours.

Snapshots From My Worklife

Blaine came in this morning and asked me how to print out his contact list from Outlook. I had no idea, but looked it up on Outlook Help and walked him through it.

Yellow came in a while later:

"Kameron, you're a writer. You know all about this spelling stuff. How do you spell wussify?"

"Huh? Like, somebody who's a wuss?"

"Yea, yea. They're a wuss, and by doing something crappy, you're wussified."

"Wussify isn't a real word, Yellow."

"Yea, yea, but if it was, how would you spell it?

"It's not... oh, nevermind. W-U-S-S-I-F-Y."

"Oh, great thanks. See, I knew you'd know how to spell it."

::Yellow bumbles off::

I call after him, "Wussify is NOT A REAL WORD!"

"It's OK. All the guys'll know what I'm talking about!"

This is what I do for a living.

Friday Beer Blogging

You better bet it's that time of the week again...

Spring is in the Air

Yellow rode his motorcyle to work today, which was very hot to see.

I really must get myself one of those.

And Friday bagels are EVIL, EVIL, EVIL.

Drowing in work. Behind on e-mail. More later.

Women & Children First

My most excellent local independent bookstore, Women & Children First, has a cool blog.

Thoughts on books and feminism. Cooool.

Too Much Coffeeeeeee

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Redesign

Cory Doctorow's redesigned his own "updates" page as a Movable Type blog. Cool. Check it out.

Bits N Pieces

LSATS are Monday, June 6th at 12:30pm (what, nobody works anymore?), and they'll cost me a pretty penny. Fucktards.

Need to register next payday. There goes my paycheck again.

It's bloody humid in Chicago today. Also, these contact lenses really need to be thrown away.

Ready for the weekend.

What was that? You say it's only Weds?

Fucktards.

Wiscon Set

For all those interested, I've confirmed my Wiscon status, and will be running around Friday-Sunday (May 27-29), heading out Sunday mid-afternoon.

Looking forward to seeing some of you there!

Randomosity

That's "SF" - "Not only does the University of Liverpool boast a library with the largest collection of science fiction literature in Europe, but from next week it will launch the world's first website dedicated to science fiction research."

Who's Amber Reeves?

"Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days."

"Doctors crack down on videotaping births" - you know, if they're doing their job correctly in the first place, they wouldn't have to worry about videotapes, would they? That's like saying you should take videotapes out of police cruisers so you'll stop catching police officers who use excessive force. Bah. Just one more notch in that whole, "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country" Bushism. What's up with that?

Yea, keep talking. Spread the gloom and doom. Keep that diet industry moving, keep us bulimic, anorexic, and binge-eating until the end of time. Make it a moral disease to be overweight. Spread the self-hate. That sounds real healthy.

There's another way to talk about this. And shit like that ain't it.

One of Those Days

I'd rather be here:



Or here. Or... here.

I think I need a vacation. I missed my beach trip at Christmas. I need one...

State of the Union

To sum up: it's been a bitch.

Want to know the last time I actually wrote something substantial and actually finished it? Oh, I don't know... about 4 months ago? Three, if you count a chapter of something as "finishing." I think I've only got two or three stories in the mail. Utterly pathetic.

And no sooner had my traveling schedule settled down than I came down with a sinus infection, leading to this, which led to that oh-so-female malaise (antibiotics + sex = much, much discomfort) that required me to eat a lot of yogurt and sent me scuddling to bed early and avoiding MA classes and exercise of any kind for the last two weeks. Now that that's over (a week of "what the fuck is this?" followed by most of a week of yogurt-eating and cranberry juice-swilling while symptoms eased off), my sinuses are acting up again, and I feel like a walking vector of disease.

About the only good news I've got is that things at work appear to be settling down, which means I'm back to working with Yellow and Dee on manageable projects (300 sites instead of, say, 1200) where I have a clearly defined role and a clearly defined "boss". It makes doing actual work a fuck of a lot easier.

I also managed to lose my internet card Somewhere in New Jersey, so I don't have net access from my computer at home (I called NJ today and had them go back to the walk-up computers and look for the computer slipcase and card, but they couldn't find it, and nobody'd turned it in), so I've been getting a lot of reading and sleeping done at home. I really need to call RCN tonight and get them to help me configure my internal wireless card - for some reason, it's been having trouble picking up on our network, and I tried to print something out on Jenn's computer yesterday and fucked up her printer somehow. There's nothing better for roommate relations that fucking up something that belongs to your roommate while she's in high stress mode, especially when if I'd have called RCN in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to use her printer.

Fuck-ups galore.

In fact, I've been doing altogether too much reading and sleeping lately, though I'm hoping that being ailment-and-immediate-stress-free will help get me out of my funk. Though workouts have gone out the window the last 6 weeks or so (it got to the point where I couldn't even manage to get down to the hotel gym, I was feeling so low), I've been back into my morning weights routine the last couple of weeks, and it looks like this'll be the week I get back to my workouts.

I've been trying to decide what I want to do about my MA school, and whether or not I want to switch to a gym that's got more bang for less buck. I can get pilates classes with more flexible times, kickboxing classes, and access to a full range of gym equipment, which'll make 5-6 days a week of workouts that much easier (6th day being merely a pilates day). As it is, I physically can't double up on MA classes on Mon/Weds because of how late I get home from downtown, and I hate going in more than 3 times a week because 1) I start getting sick of the place and feeling obsessive 2) I need those Tues/Thurs/Fri days to be a little different so I can shake up the routine. Keeping Tues/Thurs as jogging days'll be great - until winter hits again. I'd like to have a gym much, much closer to my place that gives me greater flexibility for less money.

So after much thought, it looks like I'll be switching over to a new gym come May/June, at least for the summer. If I miss my MA classes too much, I can always switch back. We'll see what I think of the set-up. As it stands, the ease with which I'd get there is just staggering, and it's just a few blocks from home. If I want to be at the place I want to be with my weight/fitness by year's end, I've gotta ramp up these workouts, and having a place downtown where I'm locked into a 45 min class + transit time just isn't cutting it. And yea, the gym cost will be half what I'm paying for MA classes, and honestly, money's really hurting right now. Too many health care expenses the last couple of months, bought a new bed, need to get to Wiscon (doesn't look like Glasgow is even feasible). Shit to do, and the bills aren't going away, either.

LSATs are also in June, and I need to call and see where the local test is being administered. I've also got to seriously ramp up my study, if I don't want to bomb the damn thing.

Taxes are also due, and have to get done this weeked, as B is in town the next weekend, and well, next Friday *is* the 15th. Fuck, I better not fucking owe anything. I don't have any damn money. Fucktards.

On the other good news front, the weather's finally clearing up to sunny 70s Chicago spring weather, and though my workouts have sucked, I've actually got my diet pretty well figured out. I added in 2-3 extra servings of fruit/veg every day and started taking a multi-vitamin, and I have a feeling the last of my binge-twinges are ready to go by the wayside. Overall, I feel pretty good on that front.

It also turns out that I didn't overspend myself as badly as I thought I did this weekend, so I'll just be able to afford the paintball outting with Jenn and the rest of her grad department on Saturday - and still manage to pick up a couple of groceries, too.

Having money with which to actually do things is always nice. Someday, I'll figure out this money thing. Until then, it's paycheck to paycheck.

And everything else is day-by-day.

Here's to hoping shit starts moving, and things get better.

These Are Still Damn Funny

My favorites of the Locus "Next Wave" of Year's Best Anthologies:

The Year's Best Stories by Old Farts Who Were Once Young Turks (co-editor Norman Spinrad)

The Year's Best New Weird-ish Tales by Cornered & Tasered Non-New Weird Writers (co-editor David Brin)

The Year's Best Retold Folktales Involving Fairies, Sprites, or Pixies (co-editor Nick Mamatas)

The Year's Best Hard SF for Soft-Core Porn Readers (co-editor Anne Rice)

The Year's Best Kathryn Cramer Blog Entries (edited by David Hartwell)

The Year's Best Interstitial Ficciones (edited by a large committee of sixty or seventy writers)

Geeks are great.

Time to Write the SF Story

Damn, I didn't even realize you could skew it this way. But you can:

"Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds."

What happens when Jewish/Muslim/Athiest doctors decide they don't want to administer health care to Christians?

Bet they'll nip that in the bud real fast.

Sorry, people: you go into health care, you help people. Everybody. That's the job. That's why we have a Hippocratic oath.

Shit.

via feministing

Hirsi Ali

''Maybe Americans think, 'This is a naked body,' '' she says. ''But this body is why half the nation in Saudi Arabia is not allowed to drive.''

Somebody Else Said it For Me

Adrienne, on the mixed legacy of the Pope. I pretty much agree with everything she says. Whew. Now I don't have to write up my own post...

Quote of the Day

"Every normal man [sic] must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
- H.L. Mencken

Just Too Cool

Create your own South Park character.




(vis pharyngula)

I Love Living in a Blue State

Thank you, Chicago.

I'll be interested to see how this turns out after the 150 days is up.

Friday Beer Blogging

Drink something with alcohol in it for me.







Beer is good. Friday is good.

Life is good.

Useless Things to Do in the Dallas Airport

Check out the human clock. via whatisthisnonesense?

Read something random of Simon's. And snicker over the latest issue of Asimov's in order to soothe my own mashed ego.

Prepare to mash in the head of this pigfucker, whose violent assault of his girlfriend because of her political beliefs is "OK" because: "Many relatives of Steven's have served in the armed forces ... and he had every intention of going to other parts of the world to defend the United States," Salnick said.

He's a patriot? Oh, well, that's OK then!

And oh, shit, I missed the big decision. What the fuck?

Now, for something completely different: Some thoughts on sex and the L word; who gets to have it on screen, and who gets a pan to the lamp... -

Now I'm not one to look for the sex scenes, and, in fact, the soft core porn atmosphere of the show is often very upsetting to my feminist politics, but damn, if I'm going to see a bunch of people having sex, if I'm going to be subjected to tons of explicit heterosexual screwing, and if I'm going to hear women talking about fucking one another every week, completely internalizing patriarchal ideas about sex, then damn it, I want to see some fat! I want to see Kit's big body with its soft rolls of fat and big thighs just like we see Katherine Moennig's spine and boney sternum on every single episode.

Annnnddddd.... ooops. We've got the boarding call for Chicago goin' on here.

I'm off!

Well, It Finally Happened

The client finally figured out that the same 12 people are running all of our projects for North America, just as Blaine predicted.

What does this mean?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Let's just say any sane businessperson will tell you that 12 people can't physically turn out 5000 sites worth or work, no matter how many combinations of places we get flown out to over six weeks or six months.

Ce la vie.

Bulimia

Good article focusing on TS's bulima... (thanks, B).

Bits N Pieces

I love living in conservative America... land of free women; free to live, free to choose, free to live with whom they please... oh, wait. Nevermind.

NYU's Great Empowered Solution to preventing student suicides, now in the NY Times. How enlightened.

And, Japan is the best. Before putting stuff in a diff't language onto your body, even if it's just magic marker, double check it, OK?

It's just good business.

More later. I'm drowning in deadlines here at the Workplace of Doom, Dallas style.

Oh, the Irony! Me, My Uterus, and I

You know, Dallas ain’t bad. It’s not butt-fuck-nowhere Denver. The air is good, there’s leaves on the trees, everybody’s real nice, and – best of all – it’s a perfect 70 degrees.

Once you get over the whole “President George Bush Turnpike” thing, and if you find the freeway signs advertising “Men’s Only Clubs” funny because there aren’t any advertising “Women’s Only Clubs,” you’ll do fine.

I’m stuck, actually, about two-thirds of the way between Dallas and the airport, at one of those huge corporate complexes that are little cities unto themselves, complete with hotels and restaurants and 10-12 storey buildings built like palaces.

Our Dallas office is damn nice, with mirrored elevators, a faux-marble entryway with fountain, and we’re on the highest floor, so there are good views. In fact, we take up the entire floor of this building. The bathroom is huge, and has one of those really nice lighted vanities, and the whole place smells like potpourri. The receptionist is a sweetheart of an older woman, who clucked her tongue at me and asked where I was staying. When I told her, she nodded curtly, said, “Good, but next time, stay at XXX hotel, they’re even better than YYY with their comfortable beds, and XXX is just across the street.”

Duly noted.

There’s not much to do here today until the people who are supposed to be training me show up – I’m only here for a day, but overall, Dallas isn’t bad. And there’s a pharmacy across the street, where I was seriously starting to think about going to get a pregnancy test.

Oh, yes, it’s that time of the month – the time when you figure out whether or not your birth control pills are working.

Oh, pooh-pooh, people say of “us feminists” and how we perpetually talk about our uteruses and our rights over what’s done with them. People who pooh-pooh are the fuckers who’ve never had to be concerned about their “pesky” uteruses.

Let me reiterate just how fucking important this whole “uterus” issue is to the rest of my life, and the functioning of my day-to-day life, and why shit like “emergency contraception” and “great women’s health care” are so vitally fucking important. Here's my take on the "Pharmacists' Have the Right to Deny You Legal Healthcare in Order to Save Their Own Souls” bullshit. Here’s my take on what “Right to Life” really means: the right to my own life. Control over my own body. And my own power. These are real women’s lives, and these are the battles we fight every day. They’re battles of life and death, and by virtue of our biology, we’re the ones who get to make them.

Here’s how we live, what we do, and why that goddamn uterus and what these fuckers what to do with it is so goddamn important: cause they're putting their hands on us. On real women. Real people. Us.

A couple of weeks ago, I came down with symptoms indicating that my yearly sinus infection was on the make, and I went to my usual walk-in medical center in order to get some antibiotics. I told the doctor’s assistant and the doctor – three times – that I was on birth control pills, and would the antibiotics they prescribed affect the pills in any way?

I was assured – three times – that it would be no problem, that I shouldn’t be concerned about it, and I was given a prescription for a 10-day regimen of antibiotics, which I picked up… (::drumroll::) across the street from the very same Chicago OSCO pharmacy in the Loop that protestors were pissed off at for not issuing birth control pills.

Well, you can guess where this is going.

I spent four days taking antibiotics before I got smart and thought, “Hey, what’s this paper on the other side of the prescription receipt?”

Why, it was the list of medications that that the antibiotics may interact with.

Last on the list?

“May decrease efficiency of birth control pills.”

I love that phrasing “Decrease efficiency.”

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why not fucking spell it out, “You’ve got an increased chance of getting pregnant against your will if you take these with your birth control pills and engage in hetero sex.”

Add this to the fact that this is the first time I’ve used a low-dose pill instead of the higher-dose one I had when I was 16 that worked without a hitch (well, except for the weight gain and weird mood swings that often ended with me in hysterical tears), and you may as well have stuck an icy knife in my gut. I immediately stopped taking the antibiotics.

Pregnant.

That would mean a $300-$400 abortion (after pushing through a line of protestors; that is, if I can get an appointment), and at least a half-day of missed work time (at $18.86 an hour – there aren’t a lot of clinics that do Saturday abortions, and if they do, they’re likely booked up). If I was one of those women who was really conflicted about whether or not a handful of cells dividing in my uterus and sucking on my body and breath for survival was an actual “life-complete-with-soul,” I’d have to deal with the moral freak-outs associated with that, too (luckily, I have no moral qualms whatsoever about having an abortion. I don’t believe it’s a living thing until it can live without… well, without ME. Part of ME is my uterus, and the part that people keep trying to put their hands on IS my UTERUS as well, which is part of ME, which is why I get so fucking pissed off when people tell me the personal isn’t political. It’s really fucking political when the laws people are passing have to do with ME and MY BODY and WHAT I DO WITH MY BODY).

Or, if for some fucked-up reason I didn’t want to or couldn’t have an abortion (because, say, my abortion doctor didn’t believe in giving abortions… the fuck s/he become an abortion doctor for then, anyhow? Yea. That’s how fucking ridiculous these pharmacist “protection” laws are), then I’d get to spend nine months nurturing a fertilized egg into a living person (using, of course, MY breath, MY blood, MY uterus, and MY money to buy all the food, all of which requires MY labor, and which, therefore, should be a CHOICE that I make, but I’m digressing… or am I?), then a day or three of blood and pain while delivering that person into the world, then a year of recovery while your body bends back into some semblance of shape (though never the same shape it was before of course), and either you give the kid away to somebody who can care for it better than you can, or you spend the rest of your life caring for that person…
All because your idiot doctor handed you some shitty antibiotics without mentioning that maybe you should use a back-up method of birth control during the four days your boyfriend was in town… Or, in my case, being an idiot and not checking the goddamn pharmacy receipt and double-checking what medications interfered with the pill.

What a great reason to have a kid. I bet the kid would be real appreciative, too.

I have spent the last four days anxiously awaiting the arrival of my period, jumping to the bathroom at every stomach twinge, hoping against hope that I had menstrual cramps.

And after looking out at the CVS pharmacy across the road this morning and resolving to get a pregnancy test when I hit the last of my green pills, I went to the bathroom here in the office, and viola! Behold! Wonder of fucking wonders!

Blood.

Good blood.

Oh, thank God.

It appears that my body and the pill are still very, very compatible. It’s always worked for me.

But, shit… Wow. Blood. How great. What a wonderful thing. And oh yes, these are definitely menstrual cramps. I don't even mind that I forgot to bring in some aspirin. I really don't care about that.

Because all of the sudden, I don’t have to worry about coming up with $400, missing work time, pushing through protestors, dealing with the cramping and blood after the abortion, deciding about whether or not to blog about an abortion, deciding how to break said news to said boyfriend or even if I should say anything to anybody at all and therefore continue the circle of silence about abortions (probably one of the few legal medical procedures many women feel ashamed to talk about). With another period, another month, I don’t have to worry about giving up nine months of my life for the creation of another person, and another year… or, actually, the rest of my life in a body altered by a pregnancy I didn’t want. I don’t have to worry about pushing somebody out into the world, through my own pesky uterus, who I really don’t want in my uterus.

It’s my choice, what I do with this body, who I choose to bring into the world, when and if I choose to do it.

The thing about pregnancy, about women’s fertility, is it’s something that every woman’s concerned about. Even if you’re not hetero or currently engaging in penetrative hetero sex, there’s the threat that a guy could come along one day and coerce or overpower you into having sex you don’t want, getting you pregnant and trying to get you to carry to term a pregnancy you don’t want.

Back in the old days, when 20% of women died in childbirth, having sex with a guy could kill you. And even now, more women die in childbirth than die having legal abortions.

And we’re living in a country that’s moving toward a stance that would rather see women dead than allow them control over their own bodies.

This is the message I get when I see protestors outside of women’s health clinics, when I see pharmacists refusing to give out legal medical prescriptions, when I see state governments pushing through parental consent laws, when I see women’s health clinics shut down because they’ve been bombed or threatened.

That’s homegrown terrorism. That’s terrorism against women and power.

A man can have sex with a woman and walk away… and retain the ultimate life-or-death power over her. Because unless we have access to these legal procedures, to safe abortions, to emergency contraception, to Planned Parenthood where we can pick up our pills, then we’re left with what the men have left us, and for many women, what was ultimately left to us was death.

If I choose to risk death in childbirth – however slight my chances are in a first-world hospital – that’s my choice. There’s not a women’s birthing draft. This is an all-volunteer army of women bearing children.

As it should be.

Don’t take away my body. Don’t fuck around with my uterus. Don’t put your guilty hands on my body.

You’re right, I talk about my uterus a lot, and what people want me to do with it, the restrictions they want to put on it…

And I do that because having a womb can be damn fucking cool and damn fucking scary. It's the only way – as yet – to create human life from a couple strands of DNA and some protein.

Me. My body. My body does that. It’s amazing.

This the power of life and death, and women deal with it every day. We decide how we want to use our bodies, and the methods we’ll use to control our bodies, because those are our rights.

My right.

Not a pharmacist’s. Not a doctor’s.

My womb, this one, is mine.

That pharmacist had no trouble handing over those antibiotics, though by taking them with the pill and engaging in hetero sex, I’d increased my risk of pregnancy. And pregnancy is a risky behavior, don’t forget that. However small the possibility, women still die bringing pregnancies to term.

Women still die, every day, birthing babies.

If I’m going to risk death, that’s my choice. Not a pharmacist’s. Not a doctor’s. Mine.

Next time, I get pushy with my health care professional - and I recommend you all get pushy with yours; whether it’s about insistence on proper medication or the doling out of proper medication. It’s our bodies being fucked with. Not theirs.

I’m not going to die for my pharmacist’s soul.

I'm not birthing a baby with this body, of this body, for anybody but me.

My body, my life, my choice.

Every damn day.

The Good News

Oh, thank goodness... my bank posted my current balance with the eye appt. and contact lenses and Costco run *already taken out.* So my rent check not only won't bounce, but I'll actually have over $70 in my account to last me until payday on Friday.

I am the scary liberal elite. Hear me roar.

All $70 worth.

Flea's Advice to Young Ladies...

Stolen, shamelessly:

Having reached the advanced age of 35, I feel this entitles me to dole out advice concerning certain patterns of behavior I have noticed over the past three years among the whippersnapper set. I know that a lot of you do not like to listen to your elders on the grounds that we spoil all your fun, and that may be true, but I think these points are extremely important ones, and maybe some of the other geezers will back me up.

1.) Thing One:

If your boyfriend insists on anal sex even when he knows it's hurting you, he does not love you.

In fact, he doesn't even like you that much, and all the Anal-Eze in the world isn't going to change that. Any man who tells you he will cheat on you unless you allow him to hurt you is an unqualified prick, and I promise you, you are worth more than this. I see this phenomenon way more among the African-American young ladies than any other race, and since the AIDS virus is spreading the most rapidly in young, straight, African-American women, I want you to know that my heart is in the right place when I beg you to PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ENGAGING IN SEX WITH A MAN WHO IS MAKING YOU BLEED.

2.) Thing Two:

If you are 19, you do not want to date a 40 year old man.

I know you describe him as "really together," and will think I'm crazy or jealous or having an outbreak of fat suburban housewife anxiety for saying this, but I, his peer, describe him as "manipulative loser." He comes across to you as being really together because he has more life experience than you do, and more money, and sure, he's better in bed than the kid who took you to the prom, but...you're not listening anymore, are you? Forget it, then. You'll see. But just like a 19-year-old who hangs out exclusively with 11-year-olds, 40-year-olds who party with people more than half their age are wincingly pathetic and are just using you to disguise the fact that it hurts him *really* *bad* that those Silver Fox life insurance plans advertised on tv are starting to include him now.

Read the rest

Bits (Stolen)

One in five teenage girls are hit by their boyfriends. More here. And 31% believed it was acceptable for a boy to act in an "aggressive" way if his girlfriend had cheated on him. My question is, did they ask men if they thought it was acceptable for their girlfiends to act "aggressive" if their boyfriends cheated on them? via Bird

And Jenn and I were just recently talking about the Pagan roots of Modern US holidays. via Feministe

Here's some kids' (well, eighth graders) takes on gender equality. What's interesting is how many times the issue of women's rights to equal participation in sports comes up as a major issue in developing gender equality.

First woman to row solo across the Pacific. Yea. That's right. Rowing. Across an ocean. For 72 days. Remember that there are still people out there who think that women have "biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days..." but they can row across the Pacific Ocean. Biology didn't seem to get in the way of that, now, did it?

Your Daily Dose of Food Porn

Breakfast.

Dinner.

God Bless Texas

Well, I was hoping I'd get out of a trip to Dallas, but it looks like I'm off for some sort of training or other... Leaving tomorrow night, spending all day Weds, coming back in on Thursday...

Dallas. ::sigh::

I've never been to Texas. There's a first time for everything.

Thoughts on Society and Depression

Excerpt:

Undoubtedly being a somewhat sensitive and emotional person to begin with makes me more susceptible to depression than the run of common people, but I still resist labelling this as a "biochemical imbalance." It's not. It's normal human variation. My circumstances fully warranted depression. It was a normal, healthy response to my situation, and only by paying attention to that situation and changing it, by validating that emotional response, did I manage to make a long-term escape from depression. Now when I get depressed, my response is not to say, "What's wrong with me? Can I fix myself?" My response is: "What's wrong with my life? Why am I having trouble? Can I change it, and if not, how can I cope?"...

I don't like that our society has such a narrow definition of what constitutes an "ok" emotion that when someone feels something outside this narrow bound it gets labelled pathological. I don't like that we are all expected to be the same people, feeling the same things in the same way at the same time. I don't like that we are expected to be happy all the freaking time, even when life is hard and we are struggling. And then if we're not happy, we can't just be sad--we're sick.

via Bitch

And SF For All

SCIENCE FICTION FOR IMPERIALISTS

SCIENCE FICTION FOR ANARCHISTS

SCIENCE FICTION FOR MONARCHISTS

SCIENCE FICTION FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK SUPREME EXECUTIVE POWER SHOULD BE LODGED THE CANDIDATE WHO POSSESSES THE MEMORIES OF PREVIOUS LEADERS

AND, FINALLY, FOR THOSE WHO JUST SAY FRELL DEMOCRACY WE WANT ARTHUR TO RULE

Martyr Yourself For Christian America!

Become a martyr for America, chiklits!

Paul Campos connects the dots. Cause none of these dumb media fuckers is willing to do it:

As I write these words, Terri Schiavo is being starved to death because she was once a chubby little girl.

Almost everyone has heard about how, 15 years ago, Schiavo's heart stopped for several minutes, causing massive brain damage that left her severely disabled.

What very few people are aware of, because it has gone largely unreported, is that Terri's heart stopped as a consequence of an eating disorder.

Terri was a chubby child, in a culture that tells children, and especially girls, that not being thin is both a disease and moral failing. And our children get the message: fully half of all 9- to 11-year-old girls either are or have been on a diet.

Terri was one of these children. She spent much of her childhood and adolescence dieting, in a desperate effort to deal with having the "wrong" kind of body. Like most dieters, her weight fluctuated a great deal, but she was unable to remain thin.

Eventually, according to evidence introduced at the trial following her collapse, she started forcing herself to vomit after meals. This, combined with a regimen of 15 glasses of iced tea per day, made her thin and "beautiful." (More than 200 articles have commented on Terri's beauty. Almost none of these mention her eating disorder).

On the night she collapsed, Terri had just eaten dinner. She went into the bathroom and forced herself to vomit. Apparently, the chemical imbalance brought on by her bulimia stopped her heart.

I find the irony of this situation deeply, deeply sickening.

I went out to lunch today, this being a Friday, and sat at a table across from two men and two women. They appeared to be work colleagues. The men were average-looking, 30ish, on the overweight side, looked like they could pass for, say, computer programmers, so I thought they were quite good-boy nice looking, but MTV would call them boring couch potatoes and Queer Eye would have a field day. They ate cups of soup and cheeseburgers and fries and talked in loud voices about work.

The women, at first glance, looked and acted much younger. Their hair was straightened, bleached. The one closest to me had that perfect bronze tan. They were both about a size four, though the tan one looked like she was aiming for a 2. They ordered salads, and spent their time waiting for those salads... talking about food.

The tan one salivated over the dessert menu, said something like, "I haven't had chocolate sauce in two years."

The other one, not so classically MTV-girlish, with more of a midwest softness to her face and complexion, said, "Don't you ever treat yourself?"

"No," Barbie said.

"Not even once?"

"No."

Barbie was little and very slender, wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt I wouldn't dare wear in public, and had just enough defined arm muscle to be considered hot.

And, the thing was, looking at Barbie, that's what I was thinking: she's the way I'm supposed to look, the way women are supposed to look. Thin, tan, straightened, dyed-blond hair, those pert features, the flawless-appearing complexion. It wasn't that she was beautiful: there was nothing behind her look to make her beautiful, no amazing wit or cute laugh or witty turn of phrase or particularly striking feature. The thing with encouraging all women to look like a certain "type" is that eventually they'll look that way, and it'll take so much time and energy to cultivate that "type" that they're not exactly going to have a lot of time for an internal spiritual journey that makes them really interesting people. Mostly, they're just going to talk a lot about diet and excercise and what they can't eat this week.

When the food came, Barbie scarfed down her salad like she was starving: and, likely, she was. Most women don't look like Barbie into their thirties without being very hungry as a result.

I had ordered a burger, no fries, coleslaw on the side, and an iced tea. I've learned to balance out my hunger: if I really want a burger, I'll eat a burger, I just won't have the crap I don't want, which is usually the fries, and that cuts the calorie count pretty neatly.

And eating that way will keep me at what I consider a reasonable size, in reasonable health, but I will never, ever, look like Barbie.

Ever.

Not even if I ate salmon ceasers and started getting that dull-eyed hungry look that supermodels carry around.

But oh, God, sitting there next to Barbie, I felt so guilty for eating my cheeseburger. What must everyone think of me, scarfing down my burger for lunch? Had I no shame? I could see everyone turning to look at me, thinking, "Look at that fat girl scarfing down that cheeseburger! Grotesque! Look at that fat woman, eating! A woman, eating, in a restaurant! How revolting! Has she no respect for herself?!"

I wanted to curl up and die.

And that's what a lot of women feel like: we'd rather die than be fat. We'd die to be thin for a decade, just give me a decade of hotness! Please! Please! I'll starve! I don't care!

Careful what you wish for.

Yea. I've had nights like that.

I used to think it must be a pretty neat thing, to be thin and beautiful. And, in fact, it has its perks. You get better jobs, people treat you more respectfully, treat you like you're important.

But you know, if you're doing it the way most women are doing it, you're also going to be weaker, and stupider (try doing complex math equations while suffering from extreme hunger and fatigue caused by overexercise), and ultimately, you're risking your life for a pound of flesh, for a beauty ideal.

And today's a good day to decide if you're interested in martyring yourself for Christan America and the MTV beauty machine.

We've got a great example of the end result.

The Strange Case...

The strange case of the homosexual necrophiliac duck...

Do you really need my commentary?

I learn something new every day.

Old-School Ancestor Worship

Here.

via boots

What the Hell *is* This?

I suppose I would take stuff posted at Tangent more seriously if they actually proofread their work. As it is, I merely choke on my coffee, as good old Dave clambers up on his pulpit yet again. If you're going to post this blather from the most inane of the back-to-old-school-SF blatherers ("When men were men and women were green!), at least edit him into some semblance of coherence:

Politcal [sic] Correctness (and in the case of the instance written about in Silverberg's column, the fallout from Political Correctness, but that's another essay), has run amuck. Now, it seems, an active imagination and artistic freedom are under siege by those on the Left who have the power to punish us for what we think, and it ain't those mean old, uneducated, bible-thumping, red-state bubbas who are to blame. It is those on the Left, often-called the Elite Left—those who believe, in their heart-of-hearts, that they know what is best for us, that we are incapable of making our own decisions..

Much as he will berate short SF writers in this column about being unable to think for themselves, which is why he - an illustrious, well-read, uber-published writer - will tell SF short story writers what to think and what to write about:

ATTENTION SF SHORT STORY WRITERS!! YOU ARE BEING BRAINWASHED BY THE LIBERAL ELITE!!!

The best part about this bit is that it comes right after his introduction, in which the author insists that he's not "left" or "right" but shares a mixture of political views.. you know, like every other person in America. He then goes on to remind us that there is, however, a Liberal Elite working at Keeping Him Down.

I want a T-shirt:

I AM THE LIBERAL ELITE! I HAVE RUN AMOK!

All of which led me to wonder if SF is going soft these days.

The same way his erection's going, apparently, which is why he's so pissed off.

One doesn't often see hard-edged political stories in short SF anymore—at least not many of them in the past twenty, twenty-five years or so.

Umm... is he part of the same genreverse I am? Wasn't there just a big story that came out extrapolating what a neo-conservative America of the future would be like? I guess that one doesn't count... being about a conservative America and all.

We'll see the occasional story dealing with gender (a very tired theme these days, as more often than not a predictable Left/liberal agenda is espoused, but not really, dispassionately explored; the agenda is so predictable as to make for comfortable reading for those in the choir, but also terribly boring as SF—or as Judy Merril had it in the '50's—Speculative Fiction. Occasionally, we'll see something by way of satire (humorous, as in Esther Friesner's "Johnny Beansprout" from the July, 2004 F&SF; or darker, as in some of Terry Bisson's or James Morrow's short work), but they are too far and few between, when taken as a percentage of the tonnage of short sf/f foisted on readers today. Most of which deals with character interaction, or the feelings of characters, or how they feel about whatever milquetoast situation lazy authors choose to put them in (yet another essay).

SF is talking too much about women and their feelings. Men, as we all know, don't have feelings. So only women write about feelings. And only women are interested in gender roles. Men are just naturally manly - unless they're James Morrow, who's an amazing writer and so is allowed to admit that men might have feelings. Though that still makes Dave uncomfortable.

Everyone knows women aren't real people anyway. They should stop writing about themselves. And stop writing about men. And men need to stop writing about gender-conflicted men, too.

Men should only write about fishing.

In space.

I'm sorry, where is that happening? Must be in the work of all those pesky non-humor-writing Women Writers. Like, who, Leguin? Show me all the softy gender-speaking young women preaching touchy-feely writing as SF. Shit knows that if we're talking about gender - you know, conceptions of being, say, human (that's female and male, you fucktard) - that we must not be writing real SF anymore, huh?

It's as if much of today's short sf has become metrosexualized, a term I'll co-opt from one coined to label the metro-sexual male.

At this point, I go into cardiac arrest and must stop reading this column. Who's in charge of Tangent?

Oh, this one's good, too:

Sometimes I have this unnerving and spine-chilling thought that too much short SF today is naught but metrosexualized SF.

Truly, spine-chilling. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

There's a dearth of imagination on any real, cutting-edge level today.

I don't think Dave reads books.

No, really, I don't. I don't think he's ever gotten past a couple of shelves at the local Borders.

Do I even need to mention that he uses "he" as the default pronoun throughout? I wonder what women readers think? Is he speaking for *all* male readers when he asks if they're scratching their male heads trying to figure out what to think about a story? I certainly get the feeling that he's only actually talking to male writers. And funny women, of course, who write funny stories about gender. That's pretty cutting edge, right?

Ballard had it 99% right. Switch his "ultra-conservative" government for "ultra-liberal" and we pretty much are living what many on the Left are preaching today. Individual rights trump everything, all the time, regardless of the effect on society as a whole. And how timely is the line about the mentally ill being left to their own devices, in light of the Terry Schiavvo case in the news. Ballard puts Nostradamus to shame.

Wow. Did you know you were living in a country run by an "ultra-liberal" government? Fooled me!

What a mess!

Indeed.

The overall point of bringing up Silverberg's column, Ballard's forgotten story, and my own comments, is perhaps to strike a spark in today's short sf/f writers. Not just in a political sense of awareness, and what isn't being written about very much anymore, but more importantly not to forget the story. If you're not writing about much of anything, it doesn't matter how well "nothing" is written.

Though, in the case of this column, being well-written might have helped.

What a fucktard.

Deadwood

As there's no real actual good shows on "real" television - and I hate commercials, the messiness of taping stuff, and etc - and since I do so adore HBO's Carnivale, I went ahead and rented the first couple of episodes of HBO's Deadwood.

Watched the first episode last night, and thus far, I'm not terribly impressed.

We're in South Dakota in 1876 with a cast of characters trying to make their fortune in the mining "town" of Deadwood, where there's no law but who's a better draw. There's lots of literal backstabbing, lots of liquor, lots of whoring, as yet very little of the actual prospecting, but lots of dirty people trying to make a living, which I always appreciate in a show.

As yet, nobody's too classically pretty, and they're mostly dirty and occasionally threadbare, which is cool. Episode one also wins for the most times I've heard the word "cocksucker" used in an hour - I think, 26 times. I don't know how historically accurate the frequency of that particular word use is, but hey, I'll go with that one. These are gritty Western boys, they better be talking pretty dirty.

This being a Western set in a mining town, I was also cool with the fact that there wouldn't be many female characters, and those there would be wives or whores, and maybe you'd have the occasional really kick-ass prospector woman who walked into camp with 120lbs on her back and a couple Indian scalps.

That's pretty much what they did: they've got an actress named Robin Weigert playing Calamity Jane, who's our butch heroine... well, er, that is, she's played by a fresh-faced slip of a thing who'll clean up really well when they decide to fem her out and do the "look, she's really pretty!" thing instead of a character actress who has got a little spit and wisdom in her face and some bulk in her body, but she's got a good swagger and her blustering almost convinced me that some of the guys might respect her... that is, when she's not making eyes at Wild Bill Hickok or getting passed off some kid that the guys rescued... (Why the hell would you pass the kid off to Calamity Jane? Cause she's a woman? Looked like they were doing just fine carrying the kid on their own, and town wasn't very far off, but this possee of guys rescued this kid, ran into Jane, and then had her *carry the kid the rest of the way into town with them.* Weird. I think it was one of those instances where the writers reverted to stereotype. Who's to say that Jane had any more idea what to do with a kid than the guys did? )

And so, yea, there's The Gem tavern where more of the liquor and prostitutes are (in that order), and we've got an immediate subplot going on with a gun-toting woman named Tricksy who has a habit of killing her clients. Sounds promising, interesting power dynamics; might go somewhere, might just go cliche (as the episode ended, she was apparently reconciling with her master, but we'll see).

There's also a promising wife to a rich-boy wanna-be prospector guy who's getting himself swindled by all of the locals: right now, she's mostly living on sleep and laudenum, but I can already see how they could play it so her strutting dandy gets axed, and she has to step up and become her own sort of prospector: fragile flower turns to tough heroine in the face of adversity.

Hey, it could happen.

So, there's hope, but I'm not in love with the series, thus far. I'll watch another episode tonight, and see what I think.

Women, Writing.

Oh, here we go again. It's like the "Where are all the women bloggers?" debate... It. Just. Won't. Go. Away.

There is no such thing as Women's Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless. Sadly, Women's Writing is the only one of the above repeatedly used as a stick to beat women who write. Either Women's Writing is fluffy and inconsequential, full of romps and buttocks - or Women's Writing is coarse and aggressive and the kind of muck you'd expect from an off-duty stripper in a strop - or Women's Writing is obsessed with plumbing and bleeding and bonding to whale music. Effectively, Women's Writing is whatever has most annoyed any given journalist, commentator, academic, or author in the past few books by women they've read. Sweeping generalisations must be made, insults must be slung, personal abuse is welcome and two or three days of columns and op-eds can be sustained with the merry to-and-fro.

There a couple of problems with all this bullshit "women aren't edgy writers" bullshit.

First: men, for some reason, just get to be men, but women, as individuals, are always a stand-in for Every Woman. So if you get 800 subs from men and 100 from women, and those women's stories are:

40 about women fleeing bad marriages/having midlife crises and bicycling around the world
20 about women and their families/finding marriages/having children/relationships with other people
20 about women overcoming vast personal hardship (including family trouble)
10 about women who take heroin or become prostitutes, and how neat or tragic that is
10 are about women who kick everybody's ass and rage against society like superheroes

Mostly, you'll hear people bitch: "Look at how domestic those women are! Always talking about all those domestic issues like marriage and family!"

But of those 800 subs from the guys:

300 are about men going through midlife crises and bicycling around the world (and/or dumping their wife/job/car and getting an upgrade)
200 are about men and their comraderie in war or with gangs or on sports teams (you know: "real, meaty fiction" like Hemingway would write. Stuff women aren't supposed to be writing about anyway, and if they write about it, there's something definately suspect about them and not worth listening to.
150 are about men who take drugs and how neat or tragic that is
150 are about men overcoming personal hardship (including family trouble)

Only, those final hundred are, of course, "better" than women's literary attempts at talking about personal hardship and life struggle because they're about men overcoming personal hardship, and how hard that is, and there's no pregnancy involved, unless he gets a minor character pregnant and ditches her.

And these stories, because they're written by men, aren't called "domestic" --

They're called "examinations of the human condition."

Men being stand-ins for All of Humanity.

Whereas a woman, of course, is speaking for ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE ON EARTH SINCE TIME BEGAN!!

But not, of course, for humanity. Women aren't real people. A woman doesn't know how to tell a story about the human condition, even if her main character(s) are men.

How ridiculous would it be, for me to group every male writer into a box and say, "These male writers? It's all about boys with penis envy trading in their wives for cars! How safe! How dull! How domestic! Where are all the edgy male writers? Where are the men writers who really take risks!"

Bah.

Maybe it means I'm trying to find a "real" reason that I just don't like the book - but am too lazy to find it, so I blame it on the author's gender. Maybe it means I need to be a better reader.

"Women's Writing"... bah.

Some Thoughts on the Day of the Dead

Most religions have a day of the dead, and today is that day for Christians. In this most secular nation, polls show few now know what Good Friday is for, this day for sorrow, for contemplating death, loss and endings.

But here the usefulness of faith ends, for it is mainly the power of the religious lobby that forces people to die in pain and indignity due to beliefs on the nature of life and death shared by very few. For 20 years now, every poll on the subject shows that 80% of people want the right to be helped to die at a time and in a way of their own choosing. But that kind of "choice" is not on the agenda. Or not yet.

Charlotte Bronte, Sex Kitten

Read the rest at the Guardian:

Let me introduce you to the real Charlotte Brontë. She was not a wallflower in mourning. She always wanted to be famous; she pined to be "forever known". Aged 20, she wrote boldly to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey, asking for his opinion of her talents. He replied: "You evidently possess and in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls 'the faculty of verse'." Then he chides her: "There is a danger of which I would ... warn you. The daydreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind. Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life and it ought not to be." Charlotte ignored Southey but Gaskell couldn't believe it. She concluded the correspondence "made her put aside, for a time, all idea of literary enterprise".

Charlotte continued in her position as a schoolteacher, which she had already held for a year. But she hated her profession and heartily despised the aggravating brats she was forced to teach. As the children at Roe Head School did their lessons, she wrote in her journal: "I had been toiling for nearly an hour. I sat sinking from irritation and weariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me: am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness, the apathy and the hyperbolic and most asinine stupidity of these fat headed oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls, while the glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is revolving in its richest glow and declaring at the close of every summer day the time I am losing will never come again? Just then a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited." Note to Mrs Gaskell: Charlotte didn't want to kiss those children; she wanted to vomit on them.

Charlotte did not only feel passionate hatred for small children; she felt passionate love for men. Unlike the female eunuch created by Gaskell, she was obsessed with her sensuality. She wrote to a friend: "If you knew my thoughts; the dreams that absorb me; and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up ... you would pity and I daresay despise me." The thwarted lust of a parson's daughter? Gaskell dismisses it as "traces of despondency". In Brussels, studying to become a governess at Heger's school, the virgin became ever more lustful. She wrote obsessive letters to him, begging for his attention. "I would write a book and dedicate it to my literature master - to the only master I have ever had - to you Monsieur." Later she writes: "Day or night I find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me. I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach - all that I know - is that I cannot - that I will not resign myself to losing the friendship of my master completely - I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings. If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope ... I cling on to preserving that little interest - I cling on to it as I cling on to life."

It's Snowing

Again.

AGAIN.

When. Will. It. End???

Snapshots From My Worklife

Me and Cyllia just spent eight hours formatting files that are now useless because corp. takes two days to give me permissions for the electronic folder I was supposed to already have access to but apparently don't for some strange, cryptic, technical reason, and all of these files are due by COB tomorrow.

These new "permissions" guidelines were part of the firm-wide security upgrade that was supposed to make our business more streamlined and secure.

Excuse me while I snicker, and my company pays out a total of 16 hours of masturbatory time.

Ah, corporate America.

I need a new job.

Huh

I have a sudden, irresistable urge to go out and buy books.

Not a terrible desire.

Tattoos & the Ideal Female Body

Discussion.

Battlestar Galactica and Its Troublesome Human Women, Redux

Ide Cyan sent me an interesting note about recent events on Battlestar Galactica, which, unfortunatley, I haven't been able to keep up on, as Jenn's the one who tapes things and we've both been out of town a lot (I plan to catch up when it's out on DVD).

Ide noted that the two main female characters in the series who are actually women (as opposed to robots) are both currently suffering from debilitating illness or injury. Adama, the President, has been dying of cancer since episode one, and now, hot fighter-pilot extraordinaire Starbuck has a knee injury that apparently has taken her out of fighting commission.

What the hell is up with these SF shows and their fear of women who actually kick ass? Andromeda wasn't bad: it had a woman captain, though she ultimately got booted to second by the new captain, who's a guy, and... well, I have some other problems with her now too: as the series has progressed she's gotten increasingly thinner and less butch. Firefly probably wins as far as diverse portrayals of women as actual strong, smart, people, but Firefly was cancelled.

What's so scary about putting a woman on screen who's not a stereotype? Who can take care of herself? Who's actually saving her husband and not necc. being saved by him (As Zoe saves Wash in Firefly)? Relationships between and among people are complicated, complicated things, and we don't all revert to gender stereotype. Think outside the box, people.

I think what continues to irritate me about BG is that they toted the gender-swapping of some of the main characters as being a huge deal, like giving 1/4 of your screen time to female characters was a big deal (well, 1/4 time of women characters not engaged in sex, 1/3 of the time if you include the sex). Yea. Real revolutionary.

What gives?