Sour Duck's Take on Inhibited Writing, Anger, and Brutal Women

Sour Duck had some thoughts on my Intelligent Blogging post. Cool, right?

She disagreed with some of the things I said, and got all riled up to write, and then:

I initially felt very charged and excited by the prospect of writing about some of the issues Kameron inadvertently raised for me through her post; however, as I was mentally formulating responses to it, I also became very aware that I should be careful not to tread on her toes. In other words, I became concerned that if I disagreed with her, she might come on over to my blog and leave a hostile or semi-hostile comment, or post one at her blog. This concern/fear/anxiety, as you can imagine, greatly inhibits your writing. I have no idea how much of it has to do with the fact that she is a well-known blogger, but certainly that has something to do with it.

Dude, if I ever show up on anyone's blog and personally attack them and tell them they're a flaming freakshow, please delete my comment, OK?

Disagree with me, please! Conversation is what this is all about.

Some of her other comments in the post also bring up that funny fear of hostile comments. Apparently, fear of trolls was a big topic of conversation at the Blogher conference. There is a desperate fear that speaking one's own opinion will... make people angry with you.

Well, yea.

Yea, it will.

If you haven't pissed somebody off, you're not trying hard enough.

I haven't had much of a problem with trolls, because I adhere to Teresa Nielsen Hayden's advice about trolls. She's consistently got comments numbering in the hundreds, and the conversation stays civil, intelligent, and relatively on-topic. They're always worth reading:

9. If you judge that a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it's important to get rid of it, or at least make it hard to read. Do it as quickly as possible. There's no more useless advice than to tell people to just ignore such things. We can't. We automatically read what falls under our eyes.

10. Another important rule: You can let one jeering, unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two or more of them egging each other on, they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them. There are others like them prowling the net, looking for just that kind of situation. More of them will turn up, and they'll encourage each other to behave more and more outrageously. Kill them quickly and have no regrets.

This is one of the problems I have trying to read comments over at feministing, because they've let a lot of rather useless assholes propagate, and comments often become off-topic and unreadable.

I know they've got a great hit count there: there's no reason they shouldn't be having consistently great conversations with comments in the hundreds. Unfortunately, one or two assholes are hijacking threads and pissing people off, and a lot of great threads devolve into off-topic pissing matches.

As said, I haven't had much trouble with trolls. Comments like, "Feminists give the best head," and "This is just a FUCKING STUPID POST. U R STUPIDDDD!!!" get deleted outright. Stuff like, "I completely disagree. You're killing babies," might get engaged with if they're willing to get teased out into having an actual discussion instead of just screaming, "U R KILLING BABIES!!!!" over and over again.

I had one persistent heckler whose post I had to delete two or three times. He was a right-winger who tried to start pissing matches at other blogs, and ran in here and guerilla-posted about homosexuality being a "birth defect" and felt it neccessary to give me his permission to go "muff diving" with the nearest "homosexual" I could get my hands on.

Assholes like that aren't looking for an intelligent discussion. They're looking for a fight. And I'm not going to give over any of my time or attention to them.

Delete.

This is my space. I own and control it, and it's my job to make it a place where my readers can come and engage in a discussion without feeling like somebody's gonna be able to get away with calling them a "cunt" or an "angry feminist." I don't tolerate personal attacks. Attack the issue, not the poster. You may very well get somebody telling you your opinion omits certain facts, or they disagree with your take on things, but when we get to the "you're fucking stupid" place, I step in.

As for anger, and disagreeing with me, I'll steal my response at Sour Duck's blog wholesale:

Oh, lord, please disagree: goodness knows the boys have no trouble doing it. Disagreement does *not* mean you hate a person, it just means you think differently about their ideas. That's a *good* thing. A place without dissent is a place without conversation, and that sort of place stagnates.

As for the anger bit: don't get me wrong, anger is an absolutely fantastic tool. The problem with blogging while running on sheer anger, however, is that you often don't pause to think over the particular issue you're discussing, so your thoughts are more likely to come out disjointed.

When I blog angry, it tends to take the form of linking others' thoughts without commentary, which often implies that I completely agree with those thoughts (and, again, *completely* agreeing with everyone is the first step to stagnation. If you do agree, try a, "I thought this was interesting, but I had another take on it"). It also leads people to assume what I'm thinking about the subject, since I've just left a link and a curse word and not much else...

Anger is a potent tool. It has the ability to get you up off your ass when the shit hits the fan. It also can cause you to flail wildly and smack anything that comes near you while gnashing your teeth in a feiry, but ultimately, unproductive, rage.

The trick is to channel the anger into something more constructive. Have your anger moment, step back, feel it, and then engage the topic again with the anger running just beneath your rational thought so that what you end up with in the end is a biting, intelligent criticism instead of incoherent screaming.

Lots of people get turned off by incoherent screaming, and they just tune out. My goal is to be read. If I'm not speaking in a thoughtful, intelligent, entertaining way (and the anger can add entertainment value, particularly when irony and sarcasm are involved), then people will go elsewhere for thoughts and commentary. Not neccessarily a bad thing, but talking to myself (as noted in Burningbird's post) can get kind of dull.

What drives me is getting mail from readers who've changed their lives or looked at something differently because of what I've written. Beyond self-expression, that's what I'm in it for, and if I'm unreadable, I'm not reaching anybody.

The issue of the suppression of women's anger is a big one, and an ongoing discussion that's been around forever. It's been around so long that I'm still startled to see both men and women all over the net still use the "You're just an angry woman" brush-off. The first insult you'll get in any forum if you don't tow the party line is that you're being an angry feminist (I was recently taken to task for being "an angry white feminist" at an SF criticism blog, of all things).

I admit that when I get pegged this way, it pisses me the fuck off, and the best retort for something like that is irony and sarcasm. Getting into a bitching match with the offender just ends up devolving the thread into a pissing match about who's got the most degrees and/or life experience, and that doesn't get anybody anywhere.

Please don't ever feel you need to apologize for disagreeing with anybody (especially me - I'm really not all that "well known" a blogger!). That's the pure joy of the net, particularly for those who blog anonymously.

I *want* people to disagree with me, intelligently. I get into huge arguments with those around me all the time about things I blog about, and my take on issues. One of my best real-world friends was actually one of the people who e-mailed me about my lazy blogging style, and I was so pissed off with him for a week that I could barely speak.

In the end, since he certainly wasn't the only one who'd brought it up, I read and re-read his comments and looked at my blog again and realized there was a lot of truth to his comments. I was losing myself to the feminist blog "community" and becoming part of a thing instead of being an individual.

That's not something unique to feminist blogs at all; it happens within many, many communities, usually because of the concern you noted: you start feeling like you "know" these bloggers, and feel that if you disagree with what they're saying, you're attacking them. And who wants to attack people whose opinions they respect?

I remember taking on a post of Amanda Marcotte's (now of Pandagon) just before she won the Koufax Award and being a little leery of doing it, cause I knew she read me.

In the end, I posted my criticism, and she and some others hopped on board, and there was a conversation going on that hadn't gone on before. Doesn't mean I hate Amanda: she's superkewl and I respect the hell out of her, but sometimes I'm going to disagree with what she says, and that's OK.

I love that people disagree with me, and so long as it's well-thought out and worth engaging, I'll totally engage with it. That's the great fun of blogging.

Sitting around with a bunch of people who tell you you're perfect and superkewl all day is a great pat on the back, but ultimately not terribly constructive.

New Domino Trailer

Keira Knightley is just so cool.

Guest Blogging

For those interested, I will be guestblogging over at World Fantasy Award Winning author Jeff VanderMeer's place starting Monday.

I'm going to try and be very polite.

We'll see how long that lasts...

Girl Crushes

As somebody who identifies as being "Mostly Straight," I've still had my fair share of "girl crushes," so I was interested to read this piece in The NY Times about the apparent "resurgence" of women feeling free to express infatuation with one another.

Oh, did I mention it's purely infatuation, not attraction?

Not at all.

Because that would be gay.

A girl crush:

refers to that fervent infatuation that one heterosexual woman develops for another woman who may seem impossibly sophisticated, gifted, beautiful or accomplished. And while a girl crush is, by its informal definition, not sexual in nature, the feelings that it triggers - excitement, nervousness, a sense of novelty - are very much like those that accompany a new romance.

It's not gay.

Now, there are some interesting bits in this article. And of course, women were able to express this kind of affection more freely in the 19th century, and often wrote one another long love letters and kissed and hugged and everybody was cool with that. And it's neat that in some circles there's a resurgence of that.

But there were a couple of things that really bothered me. The first is the way "girl crushes" were categorized as giving women "safe and valuable experience in the emotions of love" and "there's every reason to think that girls can fall in love with other girls without feeling sexual towards them, without the intention to marry them."

The first comes dangerously close to implying that oh-so-19th-century idea that romantic love felt by women toward other women is somehow childish and quaint, something to give you "experience" before you have a "real" romantic relationship with a man. The second bothers me because it's another elbow in the ribs of the "not gay" variety. People can also fall in love and get married and not have sex. Well, only if they're a hetero couple, or maybe if they live in Massachusettes or Canada or Amsterdam. Or Spain, actually. Marriage doesn't neccessarily guarantee a sexual relationship, either, and like any other sort of crush or infaturation, the urge for hetero sex/sexual feeling between partners cools down over time as well.

Anyhow, I was a little struck by how clearly both the author and researchers quoted wanted to distance this kind of attraction (and yes, I'll call it attraction) from same-sex attraction (i.e. LESBIANISM) or hetero attraction (i.e. "Real" attraction).

I would also argue that some of their attempts at differentiating "girl crush" from "real crush" are kinda lame: "Crushes are typically fleeting, and infatuation often turns to friendship in this way." Isn't that true of most relationships, sexual (hetero and same-sex) as well?

I do believe that fears of "this must mean I'm a lesbian" do still really curtail the ways in which crushes/attraction between (and among) women are expressed. I've got no trouble saying that I love some of my friends, and it doesn't bother me to think, "Hey, that feeling I have toward that woman, that's kinda gay." I don't need to go around in loops and hoops and try to justify it as some sort of "special" or "different" sort of love or attraction.

I was happy that they made a nod toward men in this discussion as well:

As for men, to the extent they may feel such emotions for each other, Dr. Caplan said they are less likely than women to express them. They are not reared to show their emotions. "A man talking about emotions about another man? Everybody's homophobic feelings are elicited by that, and that's because men aren't supposed to talk about feelings at all," Dr. Caplan said.

Let's qualify that with "Men in this culture." Guys holding hands in Iran isn't anything to look twice at.

Though if you do more than that, they'll kill you.

Not that anybody's justified in being afraid to be called gay for feeling sexual toward another woman. Cause so many current cultures are so approving of that. I think it's far easier for women to justify it as childish "infatuation" (NOT GAY!!!!), and hold out for the more socially-acceptable penis, which they may prefer anyway, but which shouldn't totally negate their attraction to particular women.

What I'd love is for somebody to just up and write the article where they admit that sex and sexual expression is a social activity. It brings people of same and different sexes together. It builds social networks. It's one of the things in our evolutionary toolbox that's helped us survive: forming bonds of friendship can and does include actual touching of the Evil Corporeal Body.

Keeping us all terrified of touching each other smacks to me of living inside some dystopian novel where we're perpetually at war with a Nameless Enemy, a Society of Disinformation reigns supreme, we're all being tracked and tagged with DNA cards, and the President speaks only in doublespeak...

Oh, wait, that was me watching CNN this morning.

Nevermind.

Good Morning, Chiklits

Had myself wound pretty tight the last couple of days.

Getting into the new house routine has been a little stressful, and getting used to my much smaller room has been a lesson in patience.

There's a trick to getting around the room without banging into bookshelves and overturning the fan that involves a lot of opening and closing the room door and the closet door in a certain order. The same attention to movement has to be applied to getting in and out of my desk chair, as well, which has about four inches of play room between itself and my queen-sized bed. In the morning, before coffee, this can be really annoying, and I've found myself, on occasion, stuck in my chair or half-fallen over onto the floor.

I'm also adjusting to new house rules. Jenn and I didn't plan this particularly well, so we've got a space that fit two people now housing three, and she and I didn't do well throwing out all of our old junk in order to make room for her SO.

Luckily, the SO is good with spaces (and drinks beer - yea! There's beer in the house!), so getting everything to fit looks nice. House rules, however, are different. The SO doesn't like doing dishes, and doesn't like looking at labels, so the labels on stuff in the kitchen (like dish soap and Lysol wipes) had to be taken off (and my "Survivor, Africa!" cup has been deemed rather cheesy, and would have been thrown out if it was Jenn's! I have compromised, and it now lives back in the cupboard instead of by the coffee maker).

There are just lots of little things to get used to, and I think that combining house-stress with gym-stress/body stress and work stress (work stress of the "I hate this job" variety as opposed to the "I actually have stuff to do at work" variety, cause I never have much to do at work. That's why I started a blog), and I was feeling pretty tired.

I've also been having some trouble with my contacts apparently drying out during the day - I don't know if it's the weather or what, but they're bugging me more than usual, and not being able to see properly is enough to put anybody in a shitty mood.

I'd like to just wear glasses, but I prefer contacts for the gym, and lugging *more* gear to the gym, even just some saline solution and a contacts case, just makes me tired. The strap on my gym bag broke, too, from carrying around too much shit, so the more spartan I can be, the better.

Work on God's War, the next book, continues. I'm still really behind, but it's moving. I'm actually really, really, loving this book. I'm in love with it. Yes. It's just a shitload of fun, and the style it's written in, the pacing, the actual story structure, are unlike anything I've done before (the subject matter, well, I've been writing women, blood and sand stories for nearly six years). Right now I'm going back and doing some editing so the rest of the book rolls a little more smoothly and I've got a better plot-setup. I'm notoriously bad at plot, and I'd like to actually *have* one this time around.

I continue to get a lot of reading done, which also helps with stress. B will be in town this weekend, which means lots of bedroom... uh, reading time, so that's good. Very relaxing.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm really looking forward to fall weather. This summer's just been a bitch as far as the heat goes, and I'm done with it.

How the hell did I survive in Durban for a year and a half?

Who knows?

In any case, I wouldn't mind an Alaskan vacation right about now.

Looking forward to fall.... ahhhhh.....

Honey, You Came Too Soon

Wow. Pfizer, maker of the Viagra, has patented a pill for "premature climax." No, no, not for men -

For women.

Has anybody ever had a "problem" with this? I mean, come once, you can just come again, you know? The "recovery" period for most women really isn't that long. And what's wrong with having sex *after* you come? I mean, a proper weekend sexfest would involve lots of sexual expression and perhaps two or three or four orgasms.

The company believes that women and men do not complain about the sexual dysfunction because, "male partners often choose to take rapid orgasm as positive feedback on their skill as a lover".

And I choose to take rapid orgasm as a great stepping-off point to having another one real soon.

I'm always curious as to who decides whose orgasm (male or female) is "too quick." Isn't that more an issue of partners' preferences and not the medical establishment?


(via feministing)

Pirate Vs. Squid

I take far too much delight in Pirate paraphenalia.





















(via pharyngula)

I Think People Who Are Good With Numbers Should Make More Money

And yet, women office accountants don't often make much more than I do. But looking at some of this spreadsheet bullshit that our now twice-fired accountant used to do, I'm wondering why the hell women accountants don't get paid more.

I wonder how much better it used to pay when more men did it?

I remember my mother telling me that for years, the bosses where she worked used to argue that the reason men got paid more for doing the same work was because they were being paid a "family" wage (even if they weren't married), and women were just going to go out and get married and have a guy with a "family" wage "support" them.

I suppose women who were working were assumed 1) not to have a family or any reason to spend money (the whole "women just work for pin money" deal) 2) not to understand that getting paid less for doing the same work sounded like something out of the "seperate but equal" south.

Women & Weight Training

Kudos to Heather for pointing me toward this site that provides a bunch of info for women who are interested in/new to weight training.

Good info on weight, sets, reps, nutrition, and tips for training before and after pregnancy (and for those interested: working out actually tends to *decrease* the discomfort of monthly bleeding and cramping, which is yet another great reason for me to stay on track).

I particularly like the photo of her pushing her car.

It Feel Like All of My Limbs Are Going to Fall Off

Sitting around the house, eating sushi and drinking beer, reading the second-to-last book of Zelazny's Amber series (one of the few old-school SF authors who actually writes women-as-people) at my new digs (pictures coming soon) in the designated reading room full of bookshelves... yea, life is good.

Overdid it a little at the gym. I think all my limbs are so sore they're gonna fall off.

I mean, in a good way. Just think of how buff I'll be. Yea.

Life is good.

I love wireless internet, too.

It's amazing, the luxeries you can pretend to afford when you're not terribly worried about leaving around an inheritance.

I intend to die in debt.

But man, I sure will have had a lot of fun.

Burkas May Reduce The Risk of Unwanted Pregnancy

Better resolution graphic
(via cara)

I Have Given In To the Bread Products

And they are good.

It really is a binge eating issue. I've tried to just eat one of something, you know, moderation, when it comes to bread products, but I just can't. I either have to do what I'm doing, which is "no bread products!" and then have a cheat day once every couple weeks in which I eat a number of bread products, or have absolutely no bread products at all, which is tougher.

I hate this strange compulsive behavior. I need to go buy more books.

"Our Stories Aren't All Tragedies"

Lots of places in Africa even have cities:

I felt as if I had been invited under false pretences. I should have been born in a poverty-stricken village, brutally circumcised with a blunt, unsanitised knife with other five-year-old girls, then, a few years later, kidnapped by child soldiers, becoming a sex slave of a rebel commander before escaping dramatically and trekking through the dry bush for miles and months until I was rescued by foreign aid workers, "rehabilitated" and adopted by a gracious American family. I would end up triumphant and grateful in the US and living to tell my story; which is, of course, a story worth telling.

Speciman Dayz: He Should Have Sold off Each Novella and Then Gone & Written a Real Book

Let me preface this by saying that I really like Michael Cunningham. I've read The Hours more than a dozen times, and am, in fact, constantly involved in re-reading it. It just sits next to my bed, and I read a few pages every now and again, and when I finish, I start over.

When his latest came out, I was thrilled, and B bought it for me in a nice shiny hardcover.

And then I realized my worst fears had come true:

A literary author was doing a whole book of genre.

It's a three-part story, the first being a ghost story, the second some sort of crime or mystery story, and the third... a science fiction story.

Perhaps I'm supposed to be surprised that

1. The ghost is... in the machine!!!

2. Terrorists are... children!!!

3. Robots... are people too!!!

I figured that once I got to the end of the book, it would all make sense to me. I would see some sort of Grand Pattern besides the obvious repetition of the bowl, men & machinery, and lots of Walt Whitman quotes.

Whereas the linking in The Hours was slightly more subtle (in fact, the parts that bugged me the most were when he tried to make it UNsubtle - the ending was too neat a connection, and I don't know that we needed long passages from Mrs. Dalloway in the Mrs. Brown sections, but hey), this one pretty much layered them on thick and then... ended.

Now, for a literary novel, maybe that would be Ok. Well, no, it wouldn't, cause it had no resonance. It didn't hang together. And when you're doing genre, you expect certain conventions. You expect the ghost to be exorcised. You expect the crime to actually be solved. You expect some sort of rousing Science! adventure and illumination of the human condition. And, because you're being given all three together, they better have an internal resonance beyond the very obvious "all the characters have the same name," and "there's this bowl," and "There's some Whitman quotes."

They need to sing at the subtle subtext level, not the blandly obvious.

And The Guardian found somebody to do a blandly obvious review of it that reads like it was written by an eighteen-year-old for a class project. And even s/he remarks at the end: "the issues are so close to the surface that the narrative feels like shallow waters overlying the reefs and shoals of Philosophy 101."

Yea. Like having somebody say "Look! See the connections!" and you want to bang them over the head with the damn glass bowl and go, "So what?"

Maybe it's my bias against lit writers trying to do genre, but you know, I've read some Margaret Atwood, and she doesn't totally bug me. This didn't totally bug me either, but it also had no real resonance for me, unlike, say, an Atwood, or a genre writer doing lit fiction, like, say, Harrison's Light. Those hung together for me, and created something more than their parts.

This was really just disjointed parts.

“Only My New Powers Can Save You, Padme”: Female Victimhood & Male Sacrifice

I was reading an article the other day about Kate Winslet. It was the usual sort of interview where the interviewer felt it necessary to spend half of the interview talking about Winslet’s weight and how much “slimmer” she is now and what an icon she is for non-slender women and blah blah.

In any case, it got me to thinking again about Titanic.

See, there was always something about Titanic that didn’t make sense to me. I mean, besides the silly dialogue. See, I was one of those Crazy Teenage Girls who saw it eleven times in the theater. It helped give me the courage to ditch my loser boyfriend and buy a one-way ticket to Alaska.

I mean, hey, Kate could do it. Why couldn’t I? I had that fire! That passion!

I completely understood why young women went crazy for that movie. James Cameron plotted the old cliché man-saves-woman from herself script, but with a twist. See, all the guy really does is tell her she’s cool, which she already knew, and then he dies. The rest, she pretty much does herself. If he lived, it would have been an entirely different movie.

And you know, a lot of people feel like they’ve got a script to follow, a perfectly coiffed fem life to live with the family-perfect boyfriend, when secretly, you don’t really want any of that bullshit at all.

At any rate, here’s what didn’t make sense to me:

Titanic blew up the box office and make a shitload of money. Now, when a movie does that, what happens afterwards is that a bunch of people usually make copy-cat movies to try and get in on the same audience Titanic found.

So where’s all the movies about a strong woman with real breasts who’s inspired by an aimless drifter hero to live a great big life?

After Buffy died, they’ve been trying wildly to figure out the formula and make another winning series: teenage girl with supernatural powers battles evil. Unfortunatley, Buffy was a little more than that, which is why stuff like Tru Calling and etc. keep getting cancelled.

But where are the Titanic ripoffs?

Now, I’m not talking about those men-sacrificing-themselves-to-save-women shows, like, say, Anakin going all nuclear cause he has to “save” Padme, when she would have been just fine in childbirth all by herself. I mean, that whole sacrifice thing always sorta bugged me, because it’s a “romantic” expectation that’s not good for men or women. It encourages men to “save” women who may be terribly toxic and encourages women to wait around to “get saved” instead of actually starting their lives (I’m a hopeless romantic, and was stuck with this idea for years). Ideally, I’d like to see a “romance” where two people bump into each other, improve each others lives, and then go on their way.

But hey, I’ll take a Titanic rip-off, too. I’ll take a movie where a gutsy heroine is shown the value and adventure and potential of her own life, and inspired to be better. It doesn’t even have to be a guy who inspires her. Under the Tuscan Sun is a great example.

So where are the gutsy heroines inspired to greatness? Or just bigger, better lives? Without immediate, traditional, romantic entanglements that turn it syrupy?

Long, Bookish Weekend

Took Friday off work, and spent the entirety of the weekend shelving, buying, and reading books. Also got out another chapter of God's War and did some editing. Did I mention I spent almost $200 on books?

And I wonder where my money goes...

P.S. I also went to the gym this weekend, and Katharine is right: I can indeed leg press my own body weight. I am now, however, quite sore. In a good way.

On Male Desire

Brendan's take:

I've been following the various and sundry reactions on feminist blogs to the now-infamous Dove "real women" ads, and have been waiting for someone to raise the question, to me obvious, about how advertising and beauty culture affects not just the self-image of women, but also the way in which straight men relate to, understand, experience and express their own desires for women. That conversation seems to have begun....

But personal absence aside, I think I can speak for the general male experience insofar as I still have a "sense" of what's supposed to be attractive, even if I tend to experience it negatively through a sense of "Huh. That doesn't work for me at all". This is what I can tell you, truly- men, especially younger men, will lie to you. They will lie their asses off, because the lies they tell about what they want is part of how they keep their sense of masculinity together. If women feel forced into a tiny range of appearance to feel desirable, then men feel forced into desiring only that small range. In public, bullshitting in a group- especially a mixed group, or a stereotypically masculinized one like a locker room- men will sing you the balled of the 18 year old blonde anorexic cheerleader, as often as not. Those who do not will think themselves daring for professing a liking for women with curves, or else will talk up one of the well-known and accepted kinks of desire- "Goth Chicks" is an old favorite.

Now you take that man out of the locker room or away from a large group of his friends, or you let him age 10 years or so in a lot of cases, you buy him some beer and you ask him again. What he will likely tell you, if he's lucky and hasn't totally internalized what he's heard, is that the women he actually finds attractive are a good bit different, or at least more widespread, then the American cultural norms. Britney Spears, back before things got real bad over there, was someone most guys could agree on. Someone like that becomes the public face of male desire, the only one that can be talked about in a general sense. The public discourse on what men want becomes either the recitation of the unreachable idea of the moment, or else becomes channeled into the arid landscape of "fetish" discussion. Goth Chicks, MILF, etc. The guy you're talking to now might have a thing for his slightly overweight, glasses-wearing coworker with that cute-as-a-button nose , who can name every episode of his favorite television show and shares his secret, shameful passion for televised rodeo. Good luck getting him to talk about THAT in front of his friends. Or a researcher. Or an advertising exec.

Read the rest

Thoughts on Intelligent Blogging

Blogging can be a very lazy pastime. You flick through random blogs on your blogroll and maybe some on other people’s blogrolls, skimming over thoughts and opinions and then posting your own half-thought-out opinions on their opinions. You pick up notes and quotes and reactions and post-post-post, then the “work” day’s over, and you head home and don’t give it a second thought.

I have been a seething mess this month on the subject of my moving. I’m angry at my roommate and her SO. I’m mad I had to do everything myself. I’m mad because my poor boyfriend tried to help and ended up throwing out his back. I’m mad that I can’t say I’m mad because it’s not my roommates’ fault that they couldn’t help me. It was a matter of timing, and when the upstairs apartment went empty, they’d already had their plans for the summer made, and nobody would be home for a week before and a week after the move. There's really nobody to be mad at. I'm just mad in general.

I sucked this up like a good roommate, told myself it was what it was, just a matter of timing. But carrying the entirety of a household up two flights of stairs and trying to make a house livable for three people, all by myself, really made me angry. And tired. And sore. I've been in pain of one kind or another for the last three months. That hasn't boded well, either. Being in pain tends to make me angry, too.

When I get angry, my knee-jerk posts become more plentiful, I cease bothering to think through other people’s arguments before posting them, and all sorts of supposedly “insightful” commentary goes down the drain. I get angry. I get lazy. I get tired. I switch off all my internal bullshit filters.

I had a couple of people very close to me, people I trust and respect, tell me my blogging was getting reactionary and ill-thought-out. I was losing some of the sharp wit and actual argumentative reasoning skills that make pointing out people’s bullshit so much fun.

It was suggested that some of this may be because I’m a part of “the feminist blogging community,” and as my hit count’s gone up, I’ve gotten lazier and more reactionary. There’s a reason wackjobs like, say, Ann Coulter get big audiences. There’s a carwreck voyeurism about it that keeps you clicking for more.

My first thought was, “We have a community?” But it’s true, there is. We’ve got the feminist blogs site, we’re on each other’s blog rolls, and there’s a circle of us who all cite each other. The faux feministing site was a great parody for good reason.

What that means is that instead of this being Kameron Hurley’s blog, it was becoming a Feminist Community Blog.

Don’t get me wrong: being part of a community is great. You get to “meet” lots of fascinating people. Unfortunately, you also get so comfortable with everybody’s ideas, you see the same ideas espoused so often and with so much ire, that you start believing them all wholesale and not questioning or interrogating them. They become your whole world, because it’s all you’re reading.

Ideally, this blog should be a neat amalgamation of thoughts and opinions – my thoughts and opinions – on feminism, fat acceptance, science fiction and fantasy books and film, martial arts & boxing and fitness in general, and women & warfare.

It should also be about me and my writing. Because that’s why I started it. I have a life I want to live, a person I want to be, and that’s why this blog is here, to document that journey from here to there and everything in-between, including the long road that is writing books and begging somebody to buy them so you can pay off your student loans. Cause you're writing books anyway. Might as well get paid for them.

And I’ve been so knee-jerk pissed at everything that I’ve done less commentary and more “Fuck this!” linking.

In fact, most of the fun of the blog was starting to go. It was becoming “The world is so fucked up!” instead of “Look at this neat thing! How can we make it better?”

A lot of that is because I’ve been really fucking angry at the world, angry at my living arrangement, angry at the people around me, angry at myself.

And I need to calm the fuck down and think clearly again.

I also need to finish my goddamn book. I need to write about 100 pages in the next 11 days. And I'm nervously waiting for an agent's letter about whether she wants to see the rest of the fantasy saga (this is the last agent I'm trying before I'm tabling the book), and I'm a lot more anxious about it than I should be.

This is the last shot that book gets. I'll be trying to sell the next one in December.

No pressure.

Damn, I'm tired.

Blog Down

Hm.

Considering some things.

Workbook

It occurs to me that there's a book I should be working on.

The house is mainly moved. Down to the elliptical machine and the gardening table on the back porch. Then I need to clean the shit out of the place.

Cleaning can happen later. I'm tired. I want to sit in bed and read.

Phone, internet, and cable are, I've discovered, a bundled deal, meaning I won't have any of those things until Saturday.

Fun.

Am also down to my last $37. I'm really not sure how that happened.

Fun X 2.

No Thigh-Firming Cream Neccessary

Found here.

Apparently, the same company who owns Dove owns Slimfast. Somehow, I'm not surprised. I'm going to go live in a little cabin in Alaska and write books.

100 Most Powerful Women in the World

I'm interested in how they defined "power." Sad that they felt they had to do a whole separate one for women because they'd put so few in a "100 Most Powerful People in the World" list. And I think we're still doing "Most Powerful Men" lists, so hey, fair's fair.

Interesting, anyway.

Faux Feministing

You gotta give the boys props:

Feministing (original)

Feministing (faux)

Fucking hilarious. It's a fantastic parody site - check it out (and don't forget to read the comments! They even use the word "fucktards"! Yay!).

I'm reminded of an interview with the band Nirvana, when they learned that Weird Al wanted to parody their song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

"You know you've really made it," one of them said, "when somebody wants to parody you."

Does This Stuff Creep Anybody Else the Fuck Out?

Just... creepy.

Book Deals: Pre-Order, Dammit!

I had the opportunity to take a fiction writing class with David Marusek in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1999, when I started my junior year of undergrad work at the U of Alaska. It was a genre writing class, meaning we were a little collective of folks writing mystery, SF/F, romance, adventure, thrillers, and the like.

It was a damn fine little workshop, and the first time I got to work with a real, published SF author who understood genre. David was awesome, but the turning point for me was the last night of class when we all went out to a local place and talked shop and traveling and life and etc. over cokes (for me, anyway: I was 19 at the time) and tortilla chips. David was a Clarion grad, and I mentioned off hand to him that I'd applied a year or so before and been rejected. I told him I was thinking of applying again when I was 25.

"Don't wait," he said. "Apply to both. Use some of the stories you wrote for class."

There's something about having somebody you respect who believes in you that gets you up off your ass and gets shit going.

I applied to both Clarion classes. I got into East no problem, and got on the waiting list for West. I reserved my spot at East and hung around hoping I'd make West. Eventually, when some of the Wests moved to East, I was able to get on board, so I got to spend 6 weeks in Seattle with an amazing group of folks. The experience was huge. It changed my whole life. I gained a wealth of amazing buddies. I traveled around the world visiting some of them. It rocked the house.

Now, nearly 6 years later, David's first novel, Counting Heads, is *finally* coming out.

He's blogging about the launch, and you can pre-order a copy here.

Drunk & Unpublished

Wow, that sounds familiar.

Can you really do a "guerrilla poetry" reading... at the local Wal-Mart? Oh, Indiana, red state and fast-food haven neighbor of mine...

Quote of the day:

"I don't know if I'm a good poet. Even when people tell you are good, you still don't really believe it," Powell said. "It's like kissing -- a person will tell you you're a good kisser while you're kissing them but there is never any way to tell."

"If A Woman Was Running From a Burning Building, What Would She Think About?"

I love The Onion.

More on the Dove Ads Controversy

Whoda thunk it'd be a controversy to show a couple of size 10-16 women in their underwear?

Apparently, most men don't like them.

Well, luckily, men aren't buying Dove products:

Here's what some people (most of them men) think of the Dove ads: "THEY'RE DISGUSTING," reads a post on a popular online bulletin board. The author's opinion expressed entirely in uppercase, is that the Dove women are FAT COWS. The sentiment seems to be shared by the unknown parties who've scrawled graffiti on the women's pictures in New York and slapped stickers with crude slogans over the ads in the United Kingdom.

But a number of the derogatory comments haven't been anonymous at all -- they're coming from the popular media, and not just from the "morning zoo" radio shows or lad mags from which we tend to expect (and laugh off) this kind of frat-boy shtick. No, this stuff is coming from places as mainstream as the Sun-Times and Channel 2 News.

Wake up, boys. I have no interest in whether or not you think I'm beautiful.

I can kick your ass.

I want a giant picture of me with a boot up some fat media guy's ass plastered all around New York.

That'd be some controversy for you.

UPDATE: Well, twisty's got some goods:

This Dove-is-so-great crap must cease! Dove is not so great! Dove’s “real” women are, like, 22, and they’re conventionally pretty, and they’re in their fucking underwear. They are given insipid slogans, like “I felt absolutely beautiful on my wedding day!” Mouse over’em and they morph into bent-kneed playboy sexbots. They’re selling beauty crack. On the website there’s even a section where you can vote on the hotness of more “real” models, à la amihot.com. The message: Dove products will give you the only thing that patriarchy actually values in a woman: a tight ass.

IUD Update

I finally got around to getting my 3-month-post-IUD-insertion checkup at PP (Dear PP, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...).

There's some pre-menstrual discharge for about four days before my period, I still bleed for 7 days, but only two of those are freaky. The cramps aren't fun, particularly for somebody who never really had any menstrual cramps before and used to laugh and point at other women who ran for a heating pad once a month and popped Motrin like candy.

Oh, karma's a bitch.

But I don't have to worry about taking a pill. My appetite and hence, my waistline, have not gone wild. I don't have to worry about picking up or paying for pills (and I don't have to worry about a pharmacist not giving them to me).

Best of all, there's non of that agonizing depression that draped a gray guaze between the part of my brain that wanted to do things and the part of my brain that actually did them. Just getting out of bed, basic functioning, grocery shopping, was really, really tough.

And did I mention that my sex drive's back? Oh, sex drive, how I have missed you, let me count the ways...

I'm not going to recommend the IUD, because it's got its own set of problems. Since I haven't had a kid, my IUD is a tight fit, which means I mostly sleep on my right side now because when I do get a dull aching pain, it's usually on the left side (my gyno says this is pretty normal. Any pain that's manageable with Motrin is pretty normal). And when I'm on my period, it's a pinching pain, usually but not always on the left side. Not happy, but manageable.

And, of course, there's the blood issue. I've successfully managed to get up, go to work, hit the gym, and get home no problem while bleeding like a sacrificial lamb, so it's not crippling or anything, but it's not a "Yay! Fun!" sort of thing, and the first time you have those heavy days, it's pretty freaky.

So if you're not good with blood and pain, you'll need to find another option.

But if you're good with blood and pain and looking for something besides the pill, something you can put in and not worry about or pay for month-to-month, and you're looking to keep your waistline and your sex drive (after the first month. The first month is a bitch. You really don't want anyone to even touch you for, like, the first week), then it's certainly an option.

I'm told that it should further settle down over the next year, and hopefully the periods will get a little lighter and/or last fewer days. Pretty much every month that goes by, there's less pain during the period and a longer window where I don't feel anything at all, really, except an occasional fluttering.

So I'm back to functioning, but it wasn't a pleasant trip.

It's pretty much what all the literature says it is: hell for the first month, and settling in for the next two, so that after your third period, you're pretty well situated.

If you're going to do it, make it a month where you don't have a lot of shit to do.

That was a crappy month.

Women Aren't Adults, They're Minors: But Don't Worry! The Government Knows What's Best

Even if it were true that birth control leads to promiscuity, what business is that of the state of Wisconsin? College students are adults.

Nope. You can go fight and die and kill other people for your country, but go off and have sex and or get raped and you're screwed! Literally! No b/c for you, slut!

Welcome to Iran.

On Being Strong

So, I've been getting back to the gym now, after four or five months off. I was never an athletic person, and I always thought of myself as the resident Fat Girl at school (this wasn't so true once I hit high school, but my self-image was already set by then), so when I go to the gym, I'm still pretty self conscious. I try not to look at the women around me and compare myself, but shit like that happens. I mean, when everybody's (OK, when all of the *women*) are skinnier and hence more "socially acceptable" than you are, you tend to get a little ancy.

I do about forty minutes of cardio, and I don't kill myself doing it. There are Super Women who run full tilt for an hour on the treadmill or beat themselves up on the elliptical machine like it's a torture device, but I like to pace myself. I don't want to fall off the elliptical when I'm done.

So if you were to see me and one of these thin racer-women side-by-side on the elliptical, I'd look like I was behind, not as tough, not as healthy, not as strong. I mean, after all, look at her go!

That is, until you get us both to the weights.

It's something I noticed at the martial arts school as well when we'd do free weight and punching bag rounds. I took dumbbells in equal or greater weight to the ones the women who'd been there for years took. I thought it was interesting.

Then I started here on these weight machines, and you can use the pin to select what weight you want, so you can track what the person ahead of you was lifting, and I started to clock what everybody else was lifting. There were women who left the pin at 5 or 15 pounds for the upper body exercises. The heaviest weight I saw a woman clock in was 35 lbs.

I was doing a minimum of 45, and that was when I was doing the lift-over-your-head stuff. For the rest, it was 55-65. And for the legs? 90 lbs minimum, up to 115/120. the only other woman I saw do over 100 lbs for the leg weights was bigger than me set everything on a really high weight and only did 5-10 reps, one set.

And I'm thinking, what the hell is up with the lifting weights thing?

I don't think women in general can only lift 15-35 lbs. I just don't buy it. So what gives? Is it just a matter of doing it for years without increasing the weight? Why?

I know there are a lot of women who fear "bulking up" like a guy. The thing is, unless you've got a big dose of above-average testoserone, you likely won't do this unless you're expressly training for it and taking supplements. Instead, you'll likely condense. Muscles get denser, not bigger, if you don't have a ton of testoserone. That's what happened to me after six months or so of martial arts classes. My biceps got to a certain size, and then just stared getting denser and harder.

So, lifting more than 15 lbs isn't going to turn you into Arnold Swartzenegger.

What gives? Are women afraid of being strong? Or are the weights really not the priority, since we're all *really* just at the gym to get *thin*? And is there really such a push to be thin that we'll give up being strong to get it?

Because let me tell you, being strong is really fucking useful when your roommate and her SO are out of town and you have to move your entire household (including the goddamn fucking air conditioner) up two flights of stairs. It's also really useful when you're getting harrassed on the train or on the street. It gives you a confidence you didn't have before, and in fact, you'll likely get harrassed *less* because of that newfound confidence (yes, I've been harrassed far, far, less since I took up the MA classes and learned the boxer's walk).

So why keep lifting 15 pounds? Cause you think you can't lift any more? Cause you're thinking, "What's the point?"

At work, I sit in a cubicle immediately behind the receptionist. It took her almost a year to realize that she didn't need to call one of the guys from the back to haul around boxes for her. The sad part was when she brought me over to haul a box that weighed less than 20 lbs.

Fucking Phone

Our phone's still out. And I collapsed yesterday after grocery shopping and putting the last bed together, so the liquor cabinet contents are still downstairs.

Sad. Lord knows I need the liquor upstairs...

Also, I tried to go grocery shopping yesterday, and realized I'd overspent myself for yet another month, and my bank card gave me a "not authorized" message. I'm not sure how this happened. I was doing grandly this month.

Shit, what am I saying? This is me. If I actually had money in the bank on payday, I'd be somebody else entirely.

Tired, Tired, Tired, Tired

Was up until midnight last night moving shit upstairs. Do you have any idea how heavy a goddamn air conditioner is? That thing was a fucking bitch.

Still, we're at about 98% moved. What we have left:

1 bookshelf
1 floor rug
100 lbs worth of free weights (ah, yes, me and my free weights)
A handful of unwashed dishes
The contents of the liquor cabinet
My roommate's clothes
2 of my roommate's small shelves
Everything sitting on the back porch

Then I need to put together my roomates' bed, replace some lightbulbs, and clean the entirety of the old apartment at some point.

Damn, I'm tired.

But hey, we've got air conditioning.

Take care of the luxeries and the details will take care of themselves...

The Problem with Flickr

The problem with trying to host images with Flickr is that they only give you two or three sizes of the appropriate sort, one too big, one too small.

Crappy. Need to host elsewhere.

This Logo is a Work In Progress

Teaching myself Photoshop here at work. The logo's a work in progress. I'm having oodles of fun over here, so watch for changes and logo clean-up.

Santorum On the Daily Show

Whu-pah.

I'm so confused at how guys like Santorum can say this stuff with a straight (ha ha) face. It's a step away from saying people who have sex with people of the same sex aren't actual people, they're fake people. I find it incredibly surreal.

I don't know how long people can just nod along with the crap before they start realizing what's actually being said. I'm waiting for the Great Masses (the 52%) to wake up and go, "Hey, wait a minute! That makes no sense!" Read the rest:

Santorum: No, no. Again, what's society's purpose in marriage? Society's purpose - the reasons civilizations have held up marriage is because they want to establish and support and secure the relationship that is in the best interest of the future of the society, which is, a man and a woman having children and providing the stability for those children to be raised in the future.

Stewart: Wouldn't you say though and with that same thing and I completely agree, although I always thought the purpose of marriage was a bachelor party but that's beside the point. (laughter) But wouldn't you say that society has an interest in understanding that the homosexual community also wants to form those same bonds and raise children and wouldn't a monogamous, good-hearted, virtuous homosexual couple be in society's best interest raising a child rather than a heterosexual couple with adultery, with alcohol issues, with other things, and by the way, I don't even need to make that sound as though a gay couple can only raise a child given failures in other couples.

Proving It's All Just the Same Shit

Oh, the shock, oh the horror.

I bet that without the manly label, it would have cost 50 cents more.

I'm Not Sure Why I Find This So Cool. But It's Cool.

Condensation clouds:



















The clouds appear for the same reason that clouds always form, namely, that the air has cooled to the point that the ambient water vapor condenses. Flows around bodies and wings always change the temperature and pressure of the fluid. It is well known that lift is caused by pressure differences on top or bottom of a wing or body so that it ought to be obvious that the pressure varies from point to point in a flow around an object. The fact that the temperature changes can be seen by noting that most fluid flows and nearly every aerodynamic flow are frictionless. In the language of thermodynamics, the flow is said to be reversible or loss-free. Read More

Gallery.

(via boingboing)

Looking for a Toilet?

You know those annoying communting days when you're stuck on a train platform and wishing to hell you knew of a public toilet that was open that early in the morning? Or, have you ever been a tourist stuck in the middle of a tourist trap, wondering how the hell to navigate through the hawkers to find a public toilet?

Well, if you live or travel through Australia, no worries (mate - oh, god, I had to say it!). Much like a useful transit map, Australia's got a Public Toilet Map.

No shit (I'm in a mood this morning, gee).

(via justine)

Signs You've Stayed Too Long At Your Job

Should I feel bad that I pretty much have experienced all of these? Put a star by the one about getting angrier...

You have a lot on your mind, just not work. The work doesn't challenge you and time hangs. "Boredom is a big factor," Hollander said. "When it's just a job, it's time to leave."

Things change, not to your advantage. The boss you got along with so well leaves, or worse, takes on a new favorite employee. Eventually that person gets layered in above you on the corporate ladder, intercepting your access to the boss, taking over plum projects and moving you out of the decision-making loop.

Hollander describes this as "death by a thousand cuts." The change is subtle at first, but your loss of status compounds over time.

Your boss takes you for granted. You do something well and you get pigeonholed as the company expert in that area. Or you're no longer seen as having potential for new projects. Or, just as bad, you're known as the good corporate citizen who'll do whatever you're asked – including relocating multiple times.

You pigeonhole yourself. Hollander knows top performers who stay at their jobs because they don't believe they could succeed elsewhere. "The longer you're at a place, the more you think your success depends on your environment," she said. Or you lose confidence that you can do anything else.

Your mood ranges from angry to angrier. No matter how well-regarded your work is or once was, if you develop a reputation as a depressing crank, colleagues will distance themselves. And that isolation can make you more vulnerable in a layoff.

You feel like hell. Unhappiness can undermine your health, said Paul Spector, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. Early signs of excess stress: stomachaches, headaches and insomnia.

(thanks, B)

Ah, Yes. I Remember This Feeling

With regular gym workouts comes, once again, regular aches and pains. When I first started taking martial arts classes, I was sore for three months.

No kidding.

Let's hope the recovery's quicker this time.

In any case, hot damn, it's nice to be moving again. I really like being strong. I've missed this.

Rape Spam Rant

As a woman who travels a lot and has well meaning parents, I get these "you should be scared shitless!" e-mails all the time, you know:

I allude to those rape-avoidance-tips emails, the kind written by “the police department” and sent by your well-meaning friend, warning you to always look under your car for attackers (or up in the trees for ninja attackers!), and to stroll around town with your keys sticking out of your white-knuckled fist.

You remember these ones, eh?

Luckily, Twisty ranted about it, so I don't have to:

The subtext [of rape spam], of course, is:

“You should be scared shitless! You were born female, and rotten luck that is, because that means you are pretty much there for the taking whenever the fancy strikes, and nothing you can do will actually prevent some psycho shitbag from sexually assaulting you, and we really can’t help you by doing anything that will actually make a difference--like giving stiffer sentences to sex offenders or castrating known rapists with jagged bits of metal or suggesting to boys that a woman is not obligated to screw them just because she smiled at'em--so, just to make sure you feel like the entirely powerless speck of dirt you are, here are a few half-assed tricks we all know don’t work--like, 'practice screaming into your pillow,' or 'never go out alone'--but probably you ought to just be too scared to ever leave the house again, even though rape is most likely to occur in your own home by some fucktard you already know. Oh well! That’s the good old patriarchy, the social system of misogynist barbarians! Sucks to be you!“

Yeah.

And I must say, I'm very happy to see the increasing use of the word "fucktard" around the net.... It's just such a useful word for so many, well, fucktards.

Why Are There So Many Tampons in Our House?

Why are there so many tampons in our house? I was digging around for more pads in our bathroom cabinet this morning, trying to clear space around the boxes and boxes of tampons tumbling out of the cabinet and spilling onto the floor. Why are there so many tampons in our house? I don't use them. My roommate hardly ever uses them. Yet we have amassed 4-5 boxes of tampons and have no pads left but the diaper-like overnights.

Alas, terrorist bombings have not yet reached Chicago (knock on wood), so it's not like we've got any local wounds to staunch, either. But I suppose we'll be prepared, in any case.

Why are there so many tampons in our house?

I need some more coffee.

An Open Letter to Viagra Guy

Do you really need to listen to sports scores and track the minute by minute countdown (from 60 minutes) of the shuttle launch on the speakers of your computer without using headphones and then narrate your experiece for the rest of us at 8 o'clock in the morning when some of us, who require 8-10 hours of sleep, only got 6 last night because their landlady was showing the apartment until 9 o'clock at night and me and my roommate went out to see a movie?

Do you need to comment on every drawing that comes back from Jonas and tell us how hard and tough it is cause he's such a stickler for actually making sure you get the drawing right? Do you have to sit in this shared space (there are four of us in here) and call you pharmacist for more Viagra prescriptions and haggle with your credit card company about late charges and tell us all about how tough it's going to be for you to get to the bank after work, like the rest of us don't have lives, too? Can you do this on your lunch break, or outside from your cell phone? Are you just a closet exhibitionist who gets off on that sort of thing, intruding on the personal spacing-out of others that gets them through their work days?

I despise sitting back here. I can't fucking wait until these goddamn uploads are done and I can disconnect from this T-1 connection.

I Hate My Job, Monday Edition

The coffeemaker at work is broken.

You'd think this would be enough tragedy for one day. I'm stuck here in the back of the office with a bunch of architect temps, including Viagra Guy, who felt it neccessary to call his pharmacist from work and request that they give him more Viagra pills because, "I have more activity than other people." He also just talks a lot in general about things like the weather, droughts, and local sporting events. He bores the crap out of me. I keep my headphones on and the music loud and ignore him as best as possible.

I've been stuck here in the back because we have a lot of uploading to do, and we have a cable connection back here, so I'm uploading from two computers a laptop and a desktop. I hate this job. I hate the repetition. This isn't even my goddamn project, it's someone else's, and yet, *I'm* the one stuck on two computers? What the fuck is up with that? The laptop is now giving me shit this morning, and I have to keep restarting it. I'm irritated at work, I hate this job.

I spent all weekend packing and moving stuff up to the 3rd floor apartment. Me and Jenn had a short window on Friday, and were hauling stuff up two flights of stairs in 90+ degree heat until nine at night. All in all, I'm happy about the move and love the upstairs space, but I'm ready to just get all that shit done. Hopefully the current tenant will move out a littl early and I can haul more stuff up during the week. B will be in town this weekend to help.

And let me tell you, 1642 books is all well and good until you have to pack them up and haul them box by bloody fucking box up two flights of stairs. We hauled about 1500 books on Friday.

To help alleviate some of this stress, I've finally joined a gym again, a much more local one, that's got kickboxing and pilates classes as well. That's a big load off my mind. I've been missing gym work, and I know that's been seriously wearing on me these last few months.

I'm also bleeding like a fucking lamb at the block, but hey, I'm bleeding. Got my follow-up PP appointment on Friday, which'll be nice. Still happy with the IUD; when I look at my other options (weight gain, depression, mood swings) compared to these ones (blood and pain), the blood and pain really isn't so bad. Motrin works wonders.

I'm behind on a lot of other stuff (writing, reading, Arabic), but I've been so stressed out this last week I just really don't care. This week, of course, I'll need to start caring, and particularly once the move is finished, things need to get back on track.

Ce la vie.

It's the Weekend

::collapse::

Beer... beeeeerr... must... have.... beeeeeerrrrr....

Am I Fat Or Sexy? (Implying One Can't Be Both?)

Interesting experiment by Marie Claire magazine:

We photographed a gorgeous, size-14 model in a neutral pose and made the unretouched photos into two mobile billboards. Then we gave each billboard a vastly different message: one confident ("I think I'm sexy. Do you?"), one unsure ("I think I'm fat. Do you?"). We asked everyone who saw these billboards to visit MarieClaire.com and tell us what they thought. Here's how 4,000 people reacted.

Is it the Weekend Yet?

No? No?

Someone called the house this morning at 5am - THREE TIMES. Finally, on the third call, someone with a slight Irish accent actually replied to my angry "HELLO!!!" and said they'd been trying to fax something three times ("I KNOW!!!" I said), and wasn't this New York?

"No, this is a RESIDENCE in CHICAGO at 5 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING."

Like many Brits, he was deeply apologetic, but my alarm was going off in twenty minutes, and fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

I'm so ready for the weekend. Where are you, Friday?

Thoughts on Roe

If they have the balls to do it, it might go something like this:

1) The legality of abortion will get kicked back to the states, so blue states will have the procedure, some of the bigger red and mostly southern states won't, and I'll be smuggling in terrified pregnant teenagers from Indiana into Illinois and fending off further homegrown terrorists bombing health clinics. We'll have our own underground railroad. How charming.

2) Abortion is totally illegal, and we get 1.9 million more unwanted children every year. This will likely go the way of Prohibition, so we'll have ten years of women dying on tables and in back alleys and trying to self-perform abortions. Ten or twenty thousand dead women a year should do it; get a million real, live women who are now dead and talk about *their* deaths in front of a higher court, and we'll go back to allowing legal abortion. Of course, a lot of women, maybe you, your sister, your wife, your girlfriend, will have to die to get that to happen, but hey, that's politics.

It's not like politics are personal or anything. I mean, after all, this has nothing to do with me, or you, or anybody else.

Just politics.

In the meantime, there's a war on, the country's a bazillion dollars in debt, and most people don't have health care. I'm so glad we've picked something like this to spend all of our time and money on, instead of letting a quite good law continue to provide a quite good service that results in less death and complication than actual pregnancy.

When are we going to go after the real villains? Why am I the terrorist?

Thoughts on Food Addiction

Though I’ve never been a classically small person (which I’m generally OK with), I put on about 70 lbs between the ages of 16 and 18, due mostly, looking back on it, to getting on and then off the pill. Add in some depression (also partly caused by the pill) and a bad relationship, and I ballooned. It was an issue of never-ceasing hunger, the feeling that no matter how much I ate, I was still unsatisfied, still looking for something more and better.

I’d been an overeater before that, but all those triggers at once turned me into a raving lunatic, and that’s the period when my binge eating really took off. At 16, I had a car, and made my own money, so I could run into a convienence store and feed my cravings at all hours. The binges were definitely triggered by high stress, and the overeating was largely pill-based.

What I did to slough off all that excess pill and depression weight quickly so I could move around in my own skin again was to get on the Atkins diet. I lost 40lbs in four months (and kept that off because I’d merely gotten back to my set point anyway) and got up the self-confidence to go ahead and go bike riding several days a week and up my exercise routine in a “fun” way – not thinking of them as workouts, but just days where I’d go out to have fun.

By the time I hit college, I was down a total of 60lbs, and after the first couple months of college, I lost another 10lb and was at my fighting weight of about 175lbs or so. That meant going to the gym 3-6 days a week for 30-60 minutes. By that time, I’d modified my diet so I was eating wheat bread, lots of fruits and veggies, meats of all sorts, and as summer rolled around and I started bike riding a lot, I had no trouble going out for ice cream and pizza once a week.

What I remember most about my time in Alaska is how happy I was, and I know a lot of that had to do with my diet, and all that bike riding. Add that to the fact that I had a boat load of money and not a care in the world, and yea… I was damn happy.

The trouble is that I’ve been raised with bad habits, and during times of high stress, I still haven’t found another way to deal with that stress besides eating. I’ve gotten better in that I don’t binge eat so much anymore (my project for the year), but I’ll still turn to shit food when the going is tough, as I did in South Africa. As I’ve done the last couple of months (though every time I do it, it’s to a lesser and lesser degree. This is a positive sign!).

But I’ve gotten stressed and lazy, and I can’t afford new clothes, so I’ve gotta cut back for a bit to get things under control. When my world is out of control, my eating goes there too, and I have to cut it quick before it becomes an issue again.

I’m cutting my drinking down to a couple beers or some whiskey one night a week, which always helps, and I’m back to reasonable low-carb (brown rice and sweet potatoes are OK), no sugar. I’m on day two of this, and today was the office “bagel break” which turned out to be a heaping tray of danishes.

I hate this place.

The cravings are always the worst the first few days after I’m trying to break my white bread and sugar addiction. I wanted to dive into the whole platter of danishes and spend the rest of the day eating.

The problem with me and sugary sweets available on demand is that I can never eat just one, or half of one. I’d love to be one of those people who could just cut down portions instead of eliminating nearly an entire food group and all sugar, but I’m just not. I have to go cold turkey. There are certain foods I’ll binge on, and I have to avoid those at all costs, or I’m going to be dropping money I don’t have on new, bigger, clothes I can’t afford.

I think I’m beginning to move into the watching-my-weight-for-economic-reasons place. Which, actually, is pretty damn cool. I’m not hating myself. I don’t feel I’m unlovable just as I am, I just realize that if I don’t get a handle on myself again, I’m going to have to buy new clothes.

And this morning on the bus, I noticed that the world was looking a little clearer than usual, a little brighter. I recognized the feeling, because it was what I had in Alaska when I was really taking care of myself. Ah, sweet happiness, a clear head.

I always feel better when I cut out processed food. It really sucks, goddammit, because damn, it’s so good to eat that food. So, so, good. But then there’s this feeling, this great high I get when my body’s running a little cleaner, and damn, I don’t want to eat those danishes if they take this away…

The sad thing is that knowing, intellectually, that the crap food won’t make me feel any better, in fact, will make me feel worse, doesn’t help with the actual physical craving for a thing. It’s like I have a gaping black hole inside of me waiting to be filled.

And it’s going to take a week before those cravings subside. And it’s a bitch of a week.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned as I've gotten older is that everything is changeable. Getting back into a rut doesn't mean you're doomed to stay there. Many states are temporary. You get back up and start going again, you get to the place you want to be.

Falling isn't dying. It's not over until you're dead.

Kids Aren't For Everyone

Continuing with the subject of having kids...

Unless you're absolutely wild about the idea, you probably shouldn't. I must say I admire those who do, but you better be clear about what you're getting into.

Stuck In NY

All five flights out of La Guardia Sunday night were cancelled due to weather. They didn't finally give into this, of course, until about midnght, when we'd all been suffering through unannounced gate changes and assurances that flights would get out at some point, which is why we sat through 7 or 8 hours of waiting time in the airport instead of taking the 10 hour bus ride to Chicago. People were so pissed of that the desk agents had to call security.

Got rescheduled for 3pm on Monday (missing work I can't afford to miss), got delayed again at the gate, got out onto the tarmac and waited, then heard air traffic control had put a stop on all planes going into Chicago. We spent nearly an hour sitting on the tarmac. Me and the girl next to me had been at the airport the night before, and we were pretty much resolved to spending yet another night in NY. I love B and everything, but I seriously couldn't afford to spend any more time in NY. We got to sit around on Monday and snuggle and eat pizza, but missing another day of work for Tuesday...

Yea.

Anyway, miraculously, we got clearance to go ahead and go over the big storm that was blocking Chicago from the northeast, and the pilot navigated through no problem.

Long weekend. Wish it could have been longer, actually. I need a new job. Got a call from a woman at Washington Mutual who saw my resume on Monster.com (this really does work - I've gotten three or four calls from people through just posting a resume there) who wanted me to work out in Vernon Hills.

Ummm

No. It's the loop or nothing, at this point. I want a shorter fucking commute.

And more money.

Off to NY

Off to NY for the weekend...

It's Like Genderfucking, Only With Sex

Alleyrat rant:

Many people have come to accept the notion of homosexuality but have a much harder time with bisexuality because it suggests a type of sexual flexibility or fluidity they find threatening. It is also much harder to pin people down into sex/gender categories if they tell us they are bisexual. We have our "gay man" category neatly figured; we've got our "lesbian" category; now we've got some new gender-related categories like the metrosexual, so we can sort out the dapper straights from the dapper gays; we've got "lipstick lesbians" for the femme dykes. But with bisexuals, it gets confusing. If John has a boyfriend one year, we see him as a gay man. But then, who is he when he shows up the next year with a girlfriend?

Bisexuality threatens the comforting straight/gay and man/woman binaries. (And the identity politics built around them). But it is also only the very beginning of sexual diversity. The simple fact is that sexuality is infinitely more complicated than which dirty pictures get you hard/wet, and the fact is that any one person's sexuality can shift over time or circumstance. And that it's sometimes impossible to tease out where gender and sexuality diverge.

For example: One of my high school boyfriends confessed to me, a few years after we broke up, that he had been getting blow jobs from an apparently "straight" friend of ours. The friend would come over, the two would smoke some weed, and then the friend would get to work on my ex. The Ex said that "if you close your eyes, it's just the same as getting it from a girl". But it wasn't, not really. Because (my hunch is) that this was an act that grew out of their particular friendship, their particular intimacy, their particular chemistry with each other. And it probably felt excitingly dangerous and taboo. And for my ex, more invested than our friend in thinking of himself as "straight", receiving felt like an okay, straight-ish thing to do. But giving would not have.

How do things like that fit into our rigid little categories of "straight" or "gay" or even "bisexual"? I don't think they do. I think the categories are almost worthless. (Except as community building and organizing/political strategies. Identity politics, again).....

So my point is: sexuality is not reducible to visual arousal, or even arousal. It's not reducible even to sex, or whom we have sex with. And sexuality is infinitely more complicated than these narrow little categories we have, as a culture, created for ourselves. Labels can pin people down, make them feel trapped, defined. "Bisexual", as a label, is the most open category. Though people tend to assume that a "true" bisexual would have equal desire for men and women (and if not, well, that means they're actually straight, or gay!) at least the bisexual label gives people room to move around in. Maybe I should start identifying as bisexual, as a political move. Maybe we all should.

Amen to that.

Read the rest.

Musing

You know, this empty iced tea glass looks a lot like an empty beer glass, with bits of foam and everything.

I can dream.

Raising Children, or Lack Thereof

I've been thinking a lot about raising children. Not because I'm all that hot on having any, but because of this post over at Bitch Ph.D. and because of a comment one of my first readers made about a draft of the fantasy saga.

I've got a female-dominated matriarchy as one of my major countries, where men only make up about a third of the population at best. When my buddy asked, "So, where are all the children in Dhorin?" I prepared to explain that that's why they had so many slaves. The slaves stayed home to take care of the kids, and women got raises and advancements depending on how many kids they had, and the social system was set up so they had this prime birthing window so they could take time off to nurse kids, and then...

And then...

The trouble with being stuck with the whole "women want to be equal" instead of "let's revolutionize this society so it's better for everybody," is that you get stuck, again, with "male" being the norm. So instead of revolutionizing the workplace so we've got onsite childcare, or better, can have kids hanging out acting as interns at the workplace and functioning as members of society instead of subordinates, we just figure, hey, the parents will work and just hire somebody to take care of the kid, like a wife.

One of the big jokes between me and Jenn is that we're both so busy that we need a wife to do things like change lightbulbs and pick up mayonnaise.

And I was reading about kids in Rome, how they were dressed like "little adults" and had to function as adults by the age of 10, and I was reminded of my great grandfather, who was orphaned at 10 and who supported himself shoe-shining by the time he was 13. Infantilizing kids in the Victorian age, I guess, just made it more acceptable for a woman to spend 20 years raising kids instead of five or ten, you know, until they could go out and function in society.

In Durban, the department secretary sometimes brought her child to work with her on those days she and her husband weren't able to juggle childcare. The kid was maybe 2 or 3, and played quietly on a blanket, surrounded by toys, in the department office. Profs and grad students would come in to say hi, and the secretary could do her work at her desk and watch her kid. It didn't hurt anybody at the department, and I'm sure it was good for the kid to get out and be around other people.

We had a paper presentation once where the presenter brought her baby with her. Unfortunatley, the baby was pretty whiny and upset at being up there; it sure would have been nice if the conference room had a cradle or something she could rock the baby in with her foot while she lectured.

Yea. I'm being serious.

What's wrong with it? Shouldn't children be fully integrated into society? Isn't treating them second-class keeping them acting like "kids" far longer than they would otherwise? I know that the more people treated me like an idiot, the more I knew I was going to be able to get away with. In high school, if teachers treat you like you're four, you'll do just the amount of work they expect, and you'll produce it like a four year old. Why should I work harder? It wasn't like I was being treated like an adult.

And I realized I was doing that fantasy matriarchy all wrong. Why should they hide their kids at home? By the time the kid's five or so, they can function in society. Kids were being sent off to knight training and Roman schools at that age. Why can't we ask the same of modern children? Why can't we tailor institutions so that we can integrate our desire to raise families with our desire/neccessity to work?

Kids in Dhorin would be shipped straight off to schools and jobs at 5 years old. The lucky ones would likely apprentice to their mothers or mothers' friends and be ushered through the halls of the capital, running notes and errands and acting like "little adults" - and being treated that way.

If you want to change basic ideas about how society works, try altering assumptions about the place of children, and the separation of private and public life.

You might come up with something really different. Well, different to 21st century America, anyway.

I Am Not An Overly Friendly Person

There's this guy at work who keeps trying to be overly friendly with me, and talk to me while my headphones are on, and be generally polite and say hello every morning. This is usually fine if it's just a regular "good morning," but I'm not somebody you want to try and have a conversation with at work if I hardly know you and don't interact with you often.

It took me nearly a year before I felt comfortable idly chit-chatting with Cyllia the secretary and the regulars here. I take a loooonnng time to warm up to people. That's just who I am, and I tend to keep things as business-like as possible for as long as possible. I'm not at work to make friends. I'm at work to work, and write, and blog, and play Insaniquarium.

I am not here to make idle chit-chat when I'm half-awake and grumpy.

Also, I am drinking ice tea this morning instead of coffee.

That's enough to make anybody anti-social.

Random Alaska Picture

Perhaps I just need a vacation

Ohhhhh Sweeeeeeeeet

Unless you fit yourself up with an IUD, I don't know that you'll really know just how sweeeeeeeet this is to contemplate.

I'm not looking forward to next week.

(via feministing)

P.S.

And also, I've decided that for Christmas I'm going to get a tattoo.

Or another loop ear peircing.

But leaning toward tattoo.

Celebrate the push to 30.

Another Wednesday Night

I'm sitting here in bed listening to Tom Waits and sending off my resume rather randomly to admin and project assistant jobs posted on Monster.com.

Damn, I remember when making $32K a year sounded like a lot of money.

Then, of course, I picked up a bunch of student loans.

Funny how that works.

I'm out of beer, which is a good thing. The last two weeks, my roommate and I have been coming home and imbibing every night of the week. It's time to lay off the sauce on weekdays.

Seriously.

I also just finished eating my last chocolate bar for some time, and my last bagels for some time, as well.

I have become soft and doughy, and though the morning weights are keeping up the muscle strength and definition in my arms, my endurance is for shit. And I feel guilty and shitty about it, because this isn't who I want to be, physically. I want to be stronger and leaner, and instead I've been stress-eating for the last, what, four months?

Yea. I can feel it.

The IUD is settling down; I can go jogging without getting some irritated pinching at the end of it. Yea, I admit, a lot of this backsliding physically has had to do with physical stuff. It makes sense that making a big change in your life (in my case, beginning a relationship after six years off) is going to have a big upheaval of an adjustment period. As we get more comfortable as a couple, I get more comfortable too (as does he - we've both let a lot slide while working on this relationship, and we're just getting to the point where it looks like we can breathe comfortably without worrying that the other person will jump ship. Lots of strong feelings on both sides).

And it's time to stop with the stress eating and drinking.

I'm on a long road, I have been for some time. The curse of knowing exactly who you want to be, exactly what you're gunning for, is that when you're not that person, you get pretty pissed off at yourself.

I don't need to eat three bagels. I do need to get back to running my three miles, and I miss my boxing classes more than I can say. Money issues are getting smoothed out at month's end as well. I have a terrible, terrible, way with money, and I've been using a credit card I'm technically not supposed to be using in order to go out for comfort-food lunches.

I need to concentrate on my other comforts.

Like, say, writing.

I'm down to 0 stories in the mail, and though the fantasy saga is currently sitting with an agent, I've gotta fucking get these other novels done so I can get a bunch of shit moving at once.

And I need to be stronger. I need to be smarter.

I realize it's a long road, but I've gotta get off my ass every goddamn day in order to be the person I want to be.

It's a fucking killer, because it hasn't been a couple days, or a couple weeks, it's been more or less four months, and in order to jolt myself out of the bullshit routine, I need to dramatically alter a bunch of shit at once....

You know, like giving up coffee.

That would certainly be something.

It would certainly be a start.

Do you know some Exec.Assistants make 65K a year?

Why the fuck didn't I get *that* job?

Need to work on that shit.

Good Morning, Chiklits

Downside to heading to the beach for a day and bringing a Kelly Link book?

I misjudged my flipping-over rate (it was just so much more comfortable to read while lying on my stomach).

Hence, one of those nasty sunburns on the backs of the knees, the small of the back, the backs of the shoulders...

wheeeeewwwwwwww

Sitting all day at work will be FUN!

Something more substantial later...

Book Launch: Bodies in Motion

My local writing colleague, Mary Anne Mohanraj, has a bunch of book-related events going on here in Chicago, including a reading at Women & Children First Bookstore, which, as I learned today, has been having a shitty sales summer now that the local Borders has opened up.

Swing by and show some support for Mary Anne's excellent story collection and the coolness that is Women & Children First.

Sweet cover, eh?

Fuck It, I'm Going to the Beach

Blew off work completely.

I'm going to the beach with a blanket, a copy of Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners, Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross, a notepad, and fucking enjoying myself.

But before that, I'm going to go buy some pancakes at the local pancake house, deposit my tax refund, and buy something decadent from the Women & Children First Bookstore.

This whole worklife 8-5 bullshit just doesn't do anything for me. It's not what I want. I don't know how much longer I can work a shitty job.

The Madness That is My House

It has been a hellish weekend here at hacienda Chicago. My roommate awoke this morning to realize she'd overslept and missed her plane flight, and I overslept so I could miss a couple hours of work because it fucking blows and we both did a bunch of rollcoaster stuff with our respective partners this weekend.

We look and feel like about eight kinds of shit, and are terribly, terribly late, overrtired, and overstressed. You know: life.

So, what's new?

The Rhysling

My buddy Greg Beatty won the Rhysling award for best SF short poetry.

Woooot!

Britain's Response:

Carry on:

ReaderCon Notes

Matt Cheney's got notes from ReaderCon up:

Day One

Day Two

I gotta get to more Cons. World Fantasy's in Madison this year...

It is 3pm, and I Have Just Gotten Up

Well, fuck.

The bank and post office are fucking closed now, and I had errands to run.

Have I mentioned how exhausted and sleep-deprived I was this week?

Dammit. I need another three days for sleeping.

Today of All Days

Because it's not the veil that makes them what they are, it's the girl inside.

Looking For Heroines

Well, I think she picked a pretty shitty lot.

But yea, shiiiiiit. We need better scripts. Something Michelle Rodriguez could be in.... yea....

Whiskey, Writing, Link Dump

"Tableaux of women pounding grain decorate the dimly lit lobby of the Rwandan parliament, but in the debating chamber inside there is a less familiar sight: rows of women MPs are seated on the black leather chairs alongside the men."

Next up after God's War, I'm going to look into writing a novel that involves me doing a lot of research into the genocide in Rwanda. It's been an interest of mine for some time.

"Boys should be taught in single-sex schools with strong male role models to help a 'lost generation' of fatherless young men find their way in life, the Tory leadership contender Liam Fox says today."

I've never been a fan of the single-sex school idea. I think it helps form a really strict gender polarity that ain't good for anybody involved. In real life, we've gotta interact with many different people, of different cultures and genders. The sooner we get used ot it, the better.

And, to be honest, being a "lost generation" likely doesn't have much to do with whether or not you went to school with boys (note the implicit assumption that only men compose this "lost generation").

"Shoes," Sheila Jeffreys says, "are almost becoming torture instruments. During a woman's daily make-up ritual, on average she will expose herself to more than 200 synthetic chemicals before she has morning coffee. Regular lipstick wearers will ingest up to four and a half kilos during their lifetime." We are talking about Jeffreys' latest book, Beauty And Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices In The West, and she is in full flow about the horrors of what she calls "the brutality of beauty".

What I enjoy about really, really radical feminism is that I can pick and choose what I want to pull away from it, look it over, interrogate it, say "Cool, that's interesting, I can use that," or "shit, she's a dingbat," and move on.

You've got to have voices from the far side of every debate acting as anchors for the rest. Radicals are fun.

Ok, back to drinking and writing. Still behind. Got some good stuff done today, but... yea... still behind.

And feeling nicely buzzed.

Ah, Friday.

Friday Beer Blogging

I am bleery and sleep-deprived and behind, and writing like mad, and I MUST catch up on my writing schedule this weekend and must continue to work, work, work... ehhhhhh

Lots of work. I got another agent nibble for the fantasy saga, which is nice only insofar as it's in play again, which is... cool.

In the meantime, I need to be halfway done with God's War by August 15th.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

But tonight, I will take time out for some beer, which is healthy.

You Gotta Love the British

The BBC has published a copy of a statement from a Islamist group claiming responsibility for the attacks.

I like the part: "Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters."

Who do they think they're kidding? "Britain is now burning with the desire for a cup of tea and wondering if they'll get tommorow off work" would be far more accurate.

Choose Wisely

I'm still behind on the writing. Back later.














"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
- Winston Churchill


"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
- John-Paul Sartre


"The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
—George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

A Little Cultural Bias At Work, or No?

Some people are attracted to women; some are attracted to men. And some, if Sigmund Freud, Dr. Alfred Kinsey and millions of self-described bisexuals are to be believed, are drawn to both sexes.

But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.

There are about three gaping holes here that don't hold water for me.

Oh, *Now* They Raise Their Vigilance

Wouldn't it have been a little late if theirs were coordinated with ours?

I feel like it's the 1980s all over again.

And I do feel it's neccessary, once again, to point out that terrorism is a tactic, not an adversary. You can't fight terrorism any more than you can fight a forward charge.

Name it. Stop turning these people into nebulous, faceless groups of "evil doers." Tell us what they're pissed about, what their motives are, let us listen to them, because the more we know about them, the better we can fight them. Otherwise, you're just waving words around, and we're off to bomb another small desert country.

Rolling blogging news from across London as it comes in.

Notes & Quotes

I am horribly behind on just about everything, chiklits.

Need to finish a chapter of the fantasy saga (book 2), and a chapter and a half of God's War in order to catch up. Also need to edit a paper for my brother.

I am also feeling really, really, sleep deprived.

The new head manager for the office has also started cracking down on employee hours, i.e. no more of our "fuck it, not much going on, I'm outta here at 3pm," thing, which is fucking ridiculous, because, of course, it doesn't apply to Yellow or Blaine. I know for a fact that Yellow works here *because* of the flexible hours. So, when things are slow, they'd prefer we just stay here all day playing Insaniquarium instead of saving them money by going home?

The fuck?

Take away my flexibility, and I'm not particularly sure why I'd work here. I'm a writer. I'm here cause I can take a writing day whenever I want to, and come in late on days when my boyfriend's in town.

Fuck it, honey, it ain't worth it if you take that away.

I'll go somewhere else where they pay me enough to care.

5 Rights Attached to Supreme Court Decisions That Women Could Lose

No, we're not only talking abortion, baby.

Stuff You Coul Be Reading

Hot damn, Kelly Link's story collection Stranger Things Happen is now available for free under a Creative Commons license... If you like what you read, why not go out and buy a copy, or check out her new one? I plan to.

And the uber-scarily taleted Simon Owens (21 and rocking the house) has another short up a Chizine (I still maintain he's just peaking early, dammit. Someday he will not be young and talented, just talented). Check it out.

I Accidently Saw "War of the Worlds"

Did anyone else assume we'd gotten past that whole "mankind," "man," "where no man has gone before" stuff with Star Trek the Next Generation? I mean, I really thought that narrators in the future would mention, also, that women did things, built things, and genernally contributed to the formation of society, seeings as women, like, have babies and design buildings and drive forklifts and such. Women: doing everything men do, and breeding for the cause, too!

I mean, really.

But anyway, if you suck it up through the Morgan Freeman narration, this is a great little summer adventure movie.

Yea, you heard me right.

Forget a minute that Tom Cruise is the lead (I wish they'd cast somebody else - he's a celebrity who's gotten to the point where he's so much "a celebrity" in my mind that it's difficult not to just be like, "Oh, Tom Cruise), and appreciate Dakota Fanning and Steven Spielburg as a director, and go along for the fucking ride.

It hits my pet interests of course: war, genocide, apocalyptic scenerios and how they bring out the worst and (sometimes) the best in people. Speilburg knows how you make a good action flick: always bring it back to the characters. It's about the people, not the special effects (though the effects are fucking stellar). Focus on the story, the journey of these people caught up in extraordinary events. He's great with suspense, tension.

Spielburg may spend a bit too long focusing on all of the grouped military shots, but hey, he after directing so many war movies, I think he just couldn't help it.

Cruise plays an incompetent asshole pretty well (does this surprise anyone?), and it's fun to watch a sort of anti-hero fill the hero role.

Unlike some other people, I didn't have so much trouble with the ending: hell, they stayed true to the original in that sense. What ya gonna do?

I will say that the cynic in me wanted it to end with the father & daughter cowering on the stairs after Cruise takes steps to ensure their survival. I love that idea as an ending shot. But then, I adored the original ending shot of "28 Days Later" when the two women - hefting shotguns - swing through the double doors of the hospital and into the great unknown.

I enjoy just being left to dwell on how far human beings will go to protect their kin, and speculate about how well they'll do in the long run.

But hey, it's Spielburg. Everybody's gotta live, gotta maintain the happy family unit.

Ah, well.

It was a good ride. I was pleasantly entertained.