Bathroom Etiquette

STOP URINATING ON THE GODDAMN FLOOR.

Now, I don't mind if a guy uses the women's restroom, particularly when and if all the men's restrooms are occupied. I've used one of the men's restrooms here before when I really had to pee and they were cleaning the women's restrooms (we have three men's bathrooms and three women's, each a private room).

I don't even mind him coming in and putting up the toilet seat and leaving it up. Doesn't bother me. I have no problem putting a toilet seat back down.

What really fucking bothers me is going into the bathroom, finding the toilet seat up, and a HUGE PUDDLE OF URINE in from of the toilet bowl, perfectly positioned so that when I sit down, my feet will rest in a HUGE PUDDLE OF URINE.

If you can't pee standing up, pee sitting down. I will not think less of you. You will not lose masculinity points. Sit the fuck down if you can't fucking aim.

I suppose I should be happy that he at least put the toilet seat *up* instead of leaving urine all over the seat for me.

This is the *second time today*(!) this has happened. The first time, I put a huge wad of paper towels in from of the bowl to soak up the urine. The second time I went in *someone had shoved the paper towels into the corner of the bathroom* and then PROCEEDED TO URINATE ALL OVER THE FLOOR AGAIN.

And I'm about to clobber the person who leaves two squares of toilet paper on the roll and doesn't change it, too. I have a suspicion I know which woman in the office is doing this. It drives me far crazier than it should.

Ah, work stress. All of the sudden, the little things IRRITATE ME MORE.

I need to go clean my fucking shoes. What is this, 16th century London?

More Reasons to Be Strong

Something I don't pay enough attention to with the whole workout/weights routine is how much easier it makes everyday tasks. For the last four months, I've resolved to take the stairs every time they're offered, even when I get off at weird train stops and realize I have three flights of stairs to climb, even at the airport, when I'm carrying my luggage for the weekend. Add in two daily 15 min walks at work, 20 minutes of free weights every morning, and 2-3 times a week at the gym, and you're going to notice some functional fitness results.

When I was taking the boxing and MA classes, I was going in 2-3 times a week and doing my morning weights, but no walks, no stairs, and wasn't eating enough. I felt like I was going to die most of the time. Trying to add in jogging days was great when I ate enough, and exhausting when I didn't.

It's easier to crouch down and get stuff out of the fridge and get back up again without effort. I don't get winded on the stairs. I sleep better. I have more energy after workouts so I can come home after a shitty, stressful day like this one and have just enough left to blog, work on my novel, prep dinner, get my workout clothes set out and packed for the next day, and spend one last hour socializing. After a day like today, even listing those things feels tiring.

I've got a lot of things that I need and want to get done these next couple of months, and thinking about it all at once has been really overwhelming. I've scaled back and am working at taking it all a peice at a time. "This," and then, "this," and then "this." It's the only way to get it done. If I sat here and thought too long about it, I'd go hide underneath my covers and spend all weekend sleeping.

And with that said, I'm going to go work on God's War...

Revenge of the Binge, Redux

Why does this not surprise me?

Two studies in the October issue of Behavioral Neuroscience show that when animals are stressed, deprived and exposed to tempting food, they overeat, with different degrees of interaction. The powerful interplay between internal and external factors helps explain why dieters rebound and even one cookie can trigger a binge if someone's predisposed to binge.

Anybody who's been (or is) a binge eater (me) will tell you that when it's real bad, it's like trying to resist a drug. When I go cold turkey and I'm highly stressed and dieting, resisting junk food (highly sweet, highly salty, high carb), my whole body starts to shake and I can't think about anything else but the food I'm craving. This will last anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour. Now that I'm eating better, the withdrawl behavior doesn't happen anymore, and I've gone from binging (tons of food, say, 3-5,000 calories in some instances) to craving (a chocolate bar).

I still associate the cravings with stress (I ate chocolate last night, but wasn't "hungry." It was definately stress eating), but I've gotten to the point where because I don't deprive myself the rest of the day, I'm less likely to chow down when the stress eating does come up.

Ideally, I'll find other alternatives to deal with said stress. Working on that...

Opioids or endorphins (the brain's "feel good chemicals") play a key role in our liking of food. Yet external substances such as heroin and morphine mimic endorphins by binding to the same receptors in the brain, produce a sense of reward (among other functions). The researchers compared how binge-eating rats versus non-binge eating rats responded to drugs that either turn on opioid receptors (butorphanol, which treats pain) or block them (naloxone, which treats heroin addiction).

From the rats' responses to these drugs, Boggiano and her colleagues inferred how stress and dieting change the brain's opioid control of eating. The binge eating occurred after rats experienced both foot shock (stress) and cyclic caloric restriction (dieting). Either caloric restriction or stress alone were not enough to produce changes in food intake, but stressed and underfed rats ate twice the normal amount of Oreo® cookies, which rats find rewarding. In other words, animals subjected to both stressors became binge eaters, confirming how strongly these outside factors interact to change eating behavior.

Dieting + stress = binge behavior.

Well, yea.

I'm going to go finish up my breakfast now.

(via boingboing)

In Which the Protagonist Realizes It's November

I sometimes forget that I can be a hack writer when I want to be. I once produced 50 pages in about 12 hours, which, when I break that down, doesn't seem possible. But it got done.

I realized at the Con when VanderMeer asked how many pages I had of God's War that, in fact, I barely had 150.

If it's going to 400 pages and done at the end of the year, this is a problem.

Did about ten today, trying to get more out before bed. Hoping to bump that up to 15-20 on really good days (like weekends) and keep at the 8-10 mark during weekdays. It's doable, but exhausting. And yet, I know that if I don't do this this fucking thing is going to linger. I've always got to put outside pressure on myself to get big projects done, or I'll spend years dithering over them.

I also discovered that my gym's fall schedule includes a 6am boxing class on Thursdays. It's the only one they've got.

6. a. m.

Sweet fuck. I can afford to get to work late once a week, and then do the Friday self defense class, and hey, look at that, I'm back in the self-defense game again.

Fuck, I want to get back into it. I'm aching for it. Now I just need to get my body up to it. I accumulated a gross sleep debt this weekend.

We'll see how it goes.

6 fucking am.

Who the hell gets to class that early?

Oh, wacky people like me who overcommit.

Dear Day Job: Fuck You

7:30 am conference call??????

Four more daily reports for the client (IN ADDITION TO THE FIVE I ALREADY DO????)

Since when do I have to work for a living? What's this all about?

Fantasy Women

I'm not particularly fond of writing about beautiful women.

Let me explain.

I went to a panel on Sunday about images of women in fantasy art, and the panelists pointed out the current trend on fantasy covers of of portraying women as strong and muscular, though still half-clothed and with breasts as big as their heads. This being fantasy marketing, both men and women portrayed on covers are, in general, going to be traditionally "beautiful." And beauty in this culture, alas, constitutes a very narrow type.

I wandered the art show at WFC and saw what passed for strong-chick art. I half-heartedly looked through the prints to see if maybe the male artist had protrayed a "real" warrior-woman type. You know, clothed, with practical breasts, practical armor, and a look on her face that said something other than "Come fuck me, or hey, I'll fuck you!" I wanted the, "I'll kick your ass, buddy. I've seen more of the world than you could possibly imagine," look. And I didn't get it. That sort of look is too intimidating, I guess.

And looking at these images, I thought, you know, these aren't the sorts of women I write about. Even the desert women I write about wear more clothes than these women, and of course, have smaller breasts and shorter legs, and they tend to be tan-to-black, not pearl white. In fact, my favorite characters aren't beautiful at all. Not just Lilihin the plain-faced scullery maid in one of my books, but my favorite character in Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is a girl described as "horse-faced."

I'm always very careful with my use of beauty in my fiction. Beauty, that too-pretty beauty, is by its very nature rare. That's what keeps everybody trying to be like that type. If what we collectively decided was "beautiful" was something everyone already was, our diet and cosmetics industries would crash. So now we've got beauty clones, everybody going cocaine-thin and blond and getting boob jobs.

And I'm not terribly keen on clones.

I enjoy stories where running into beauty is rare, and it's something my protagonist hasn't got. I love traditionally unbeautiful protagonists because it means they have to work harder than everyone else. The one beautiful boy in my last book uses those looks to forward his position. The beautiful woman in book two does the same, with a far more dark-hearted intention. Characters without beauty need to have more and better strengths - physical and mental - than those with beauty. It's been marked often in real life that "traditionally beautiful" women are more likely to get a position than, say, a fat or obese or "ugly" woman, though the beautiful one may get stuck there if she doesn't play her cards right.

So while listening to the audience talk about the allure of fantasy, about how they wanted to pretend - just for a moment - that they were small, dainty, beautiful women (with large breasts), I was thinking about why I would write a fantasy book that didn't have beautiful women characters. At heart, I think I just do believe that beautiful characters are less interesting. You can do fantastic things with it, as Chuck Palahniuk did in Invisible Monsters, but I'm more interested in how women (especially) make it when they're considered unbeautiful by the cultures they're in (and, neccessarily, each of those culture have a different view of what that is, of course). I heard yet another lament about an author who wrote a black female protagonist and ended up with a blond caucasion women with a crew cut on the cover of her book. The blond was considered the more "saleable" beauty. But that's not what the book was about.

And that's when you get to the sticky problem of book content vs. book cover marketing. There's still this idea in the publishing industry that a busty woman will sell a book more quickly than a sleek, tasteful, intelligent cover (which says a lot about the associations being put on the overly-sexualized female body. What lies inside must be fluff, unintelligent, not serious). People will argue that sex sells, but if that's so, why aren't there more naked men on covers, like in the romance genre? I still nearly fall out of my chair during that scene in Fight Club when Brad Pitt answers the knock at his bedroom door in the buff. He's like a Greek statue come to life. If sex sells, why don't boys sell it?

One artist on the panel pointed out that her female nude pictures will sell equally to men and women, but when she paints a male nude, she's just cut the audience for that portrait in half. Men, especially straight men, are far more unlikely to buy a portrait of a nude man, even if they find it arresting. There's just too much of a stigma against men viewing other men. Naked men are scary to other men, or scary in their non-scariness, in their vulnerableness. I wonder if naked men are taken more seriously than naked women, or if the real problem is that they aren't...

Though I, personally, enjoy the current trend where we're moving away from dainty female heroines and celebrating an image that at least appears to be more substantial, the images are still often undermined by bad armor and their lack of clothes. Instead of the virgin, we're getting the whore.

But I don't think it has to be that way. We don't have to have an either/or. There are dainty little women in real life who feel put off and pressured to be big, strong women, and big strong women who feel they have to small and fem in order to be "real women." I don't know why fantasy images can't be as diverse as women in real life.

Little Jane Eyre is as formidable a heroine as, say, Tamora Peirce's Alanna (also a not overly beautiful heroine, despite the cheesy violet eyes) or Aud or pretty much any heroine Octavia Butler writes. The trouble with illustrators marketing fantasy women to the widest group of readers possible is that what we end up with is a big-breasted blond aryan every damn time. There's nothing wrong with these big-busted blond aryan women, but I'm not sure that this is really the image everybody wants in their heroine.

You can argue about the marketing of fashion magazines: marketed to women, all with beautiful airbrushed women on the covers. But women's magazines sell us fantasy more than fantasy fiction does. They sell us cosmetics, clothes, and plastic surgery. It's their business to give us fantasy women.

And I don't know that fantasy fiction is selling us fantasy in the same way. I think it markets adventure in places that don't and can't exist. And most of us don't really believe we're going to wake up tomorrow with magic powers.

But lots of adolescents (and many older women and some men) wake up thinking we'll look like a fashion model, if we're just disciplined enough, if we just work hard enough, if we just eat less, exercise until we throw up, stay calm, give up all else. And for most of us (98%), that's not true.

I think we want to read about people who we admire in some way, who are like us, who we believe we can be. And for fantasy to sell the same image about what constitutes a beautiful and desirable person in the same way a fashion magazine does feels really false and unhappy to me. There's more than a pretty face that one can emulate to be a fucking heroic person. In fact, the face has very little to do with it. Beautiful, unmarried, unblemished faces speak to me of blank slates; they're faces that haven't seen very much of the world, very little pain, very little sorrow. It's age and wisdom and the features slightly off kilter from our beauty-norm that make me look twice.

Hell, I'm biased, sure. I want better fantasy art.

And yet what's been done with the Dove ads and the new Nike ads does, I believe, illustrate that there's a market out there for something that sells shit, sure, but does so in what I hope is a slightly less damaging way, something that tells you to celebrate yourself instead of hating yourself.

On the one hand, we have the fantasy women with wings and unicorn horns and tails, stuff we'll never be and will use as inspiration for Halloween costumes. On the other hand, why can't I find my hard-core fantasy women, the ones with the shining eyes, the battle ax dripping blood, the sensible clothes, and the cool "yea, I'm strong, fuck off" expression on her face? Somebody I can look at and say "Yea, I want to be that strong. I want to have that kind of heroic character. I want to save the world."

If we're really dealing with fantasy images, images of everything and everyone that could ever exist, sprung from millions of imaginations worldwide, why do so many of those images look alike?

Insert: Infodump

Wow, that sure is a whole lot of narration I just shoved in there.

I Need Some Bloody Fucking Coffee

Stayed up until 2am on Friday drinking beer, eating pizza, and socializing. Tried to get to the room for some reading and relaxing time on Saturday, but ended up running into a Big Relationship snafu with B and spent two or three hours on the phone putting out relationship fires and then another two or three hours talking to Jenn about how the hell to handle these sorts of weird communication issues in the future, and by breakfast on Sunday I was so physically and emotionally tired that I was amazed I managed to make my breakfast date on time, let alone speak in whole sentences.

I'd say about half the weekend was great, half was so-so. Met great people, which was the highlight. The dealer's room was cool too. I missed the Thursday programming, which looked like it was a lot better than some of the subsequent programming. There wasn't a lot to choose from, but that's understandable: the reason every other nametag at the Con was somebody you knew because you'd read their work or their blog, was because they were all there to do business. Lots of agent/publisher/writer meetings, and parties. And beer. And parties.

So my $150 didn't stretch terribly far. I think I was also incredibly ancy during the entire Con. Meeting a ton of people you've only known via blog was weird, and I think I was more nervous about it than I knew I was. If that makes sense. There's this strange disconnect moment when you realize the people you're talking to know a whole lot of wild and woolly "facts" about your life. Not that they care, it's just weird.

And I'm still very tired, and not making sense. I cleared up some more stuff with B last night, and cleaned my entire room.

Now I have a novel to finish.

Woot.

About Three Steps Away from Quitting

Wow, I'm really starting to hate our client.

Post-Drunken Blogging

Lots of beer, meeting people you've only known through blogs, and eating pizza at 2am will result in some very strange dreams.

Had a great tour of Madison with some folks, finally got to meet the VanderMeers, chatised Matt Cheney for not blogging while at the con, and met a ton of people at the parties whose names and/or work I knew, which is always a surreal experience.

Not much to report, except that the pizza at Glass Nickel Pizza is really fucking good, and they deliver until 2am.

Oh, and all these people I'm meeting are cool, of course. But I mean, it's a Con, that's expected. heh heh

On the Road Again

Whooooooooooo hooooooooooooooo!

World Fantasy Convention, Madison (that's Wisconsin)

No, I'm not there today. Got bills to pay. But I will be heading up there tomorrow after doing some remote reporting for work from home. Me and Jenn should be there just in time to catch lunch, register, and maybe hit a 2pm panel, though we might get lost in the Dealer's Room en route.

We're staying at the Hilton Madison, with a water view, because dammit, if I'm going to travel, I'm making this a proper vacation.

Hopefully, we'll get there just in time for a good, old-fashioned Wisconsin riot.

I must say, I'm looking forward to it!















P.S. Yes, I'll be bringing my computer and may be doing some drunken blogging. I'll be trying to stay out of the way of any wayward cameras, as there's nothing worse than getting a candid drunken photo snapped of you at a con and find it widely circulated on the net. heh. As if I could be so lucky!

It's -5 Today in Fairbanks

Why do I miss it so?


























Ah, that's right. Now I remember...

I'm Not a Lesbian, But I Play One On TV

Some Appreciation for Rachael Ray -- From a Feminist Lesbian Boxer

Heh heh

I'm so amused.

My Brother's Price is a Ford F150

I put off reading Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price for as long as possible. Finally, after seeing it again in Locus and reading some good reader reviews, I decided to give in.

The book's about a boy about to be married in a world where women rule because live male births are incredibly rare (about one in thirty). I like keeping up with what people are writing about female-dominated societies; I like to know how they work out the world-building around it, how everything works, what things are different, what are the same.

The idea around the story, I read, was that it would be a reversal romance: the passive "heroine" looking for a good marriage would be male, and the sisters he falls for would be the active "heroes."

All this being so, I had a lot of worries about this book, starting with the cover:




























Yea. Looks like some serious role reversal there.

My second worry came in paragraph one:

There were a few advantages to being a boy in a society dominated by women. One, Jerin Whistler thought, was that you could throttle your older sister, and everyone would say, "She was one of twenty-eight girls - a middle sister - and a troublemakers, too, and he - he's a boy," and that would be the end of it.

So, even in a female dominated society, men are allowed to beat up on women without penalty because there are so many women?

Yet, I perserved. Why? Because, after the first twenty pages of as-you-know-bob dialogue set up, I really started to like the characters. I really hoped Jerin would get laid with some hot, strong, smart chick, and his sisters were all these really awesome theif/soldier trained women who ran a farm. Despite my reservations about the world they lived in, I liked them. So I was happy to hear that they planned to swap their brother for a husband for themselves. Meaning, they hadn't been laid either.

Getting laid in this society is a little trickier than you might suspect. Spencer works in the importance of a man's virgitiy before marriage by explaining that if a boy gets and STD before his wedding day, the family of sisters buying him off will choke the deal because if he's got something, then the whole family will get it. Same with the women: they pick something up, husband gets it, all the sisters get it. Oddly, this society can measure the sperm count of a man but can't cure syphilis. Go figure. Anyhow, so boys get lots of attention from their sisters. Boys, being so rare, are considered property and kept close by. Women raiding holds for boys isn't an uncommon practice.

In fact, women are so prolific in this society that it's common for women to just toss out their girl children when they have them and "try again" for a boy.

Great! A female-dominated society, and girl babies are still greeted as gutter trash. One royal husband also abuses his wives and brutally rapes one of them. And guess what? Because he's a guy, he goes unpunished.

How does this fulfill the "things can be really different?" school of spec. fic.?

Anyway, with all this worry about disease and all this aching celibacy until marriage, where, you may ask are all the lesbians?

Oh, well there's just the one. The evil river trash villain, of course. Well, one of them. And one of the sisters Jerin ends up with may be bisexual. Whatever her past, she's in love with him, of course.

And therein lies some of the most troubling bits of this book. Jerin is beautiful. All the princesses love him. Whatever you predict will happen after you read the first fifty pages of the book, does. There's not a lot of plot twists. Not much suspense. The scene changes are choppy, like the book was getting too long so transition scenes were cut. I was never worried about Jerin, his sisters, or the princesses dying or having really horrible things happen to them. I was unsurprised when Spencer ended the book with "happily ever after." It's that sort of book.

Nobody you care about is killed, maimed, dismembered, or scarred in any way. And you never believe anything like that will happen to them anyway. The plotting is really cut and dry, easy to follow. The main plot of some missing cannons and another family trying to take over the throne is actually the *sub*plot. The majority of the book is taken up with Jerin accidently getting all the princesses to fall in love with him. This ain't no Game of Thrones.

And yet you really want to watch Jerin get laid and all these women get laid and everybody get in a big bed together.

I could have done with some more explicit sex scenes, I think.

That might have made up for the fact that there weren't any good lesbians in it.

Strange Days

Sure is a surreal day when you get linked by Salon.com

Shut up, You Book Junkie!

Apparently, I’m not a “real” feminist because I haven’t “suffered” enough. Instead, I’m one of those “college feminists” whose daddy paid for college and who will go on to live a picket-fenced life and raise my 2.5 kids and forget all about what life’s like outside the suburbs. Right?

Oh, fuck off.

You know what: I do have a really good life. And yes, I’m white. I have three degrees, all but one of which I paid for, in full, by myself. I’ve also been evicted from my apartment, subsisted on nothing but eggs and macaroni and cheese for two years, had my phone turned off because I couldn’t afford the bill, threatened a restraining order on an abusive ex, and told myself when I turned 19 that I would never live that life ever again.

And here in Chicago, after three months of temp jobs, I landed a cushy project assistant position at a telecommunications company.

And you know what?

I worked really fucking hard for this.

My sister’s currently in an off-again, on-again relationship with a former (?) meth addict who’s unemployed and sponging off his meth-dealer family. She’s got a child from a former boyfriend that she can’t afford to support and whose health insurance is paid by the state. She’s lived most of her adult life in subsidized housing. She’s employed only because my dad owns two small pizza franchises and has allowed her to work for him despite a number of altercations. She and her ex used to have screaming fights and hit each other.

And you know what?

I don’t want to live like that.

I live very well. And I live this way because I refuse to be white trash. I refuse to go back to subsisting on macaroni, and everything I’ve done in my life has been getting me to this place I am in my life. Education was my route to this life, and I’ve got 30K in student loans to show for it.

And I’m now a cozy college feminist in her cozy 3-flat in Chicago.

And let me tell you, there were many, many, many turns along the way that would have led me to a much different life. But this was the life I wanted.

So don’t tell me my opinion doesn’t matter because I have an education and you’ve had a harder road. I got hit with a lot of bad nuts, too, but this is where I wanted to end up, and with a lot of luck, some very good friends, and some good choices, this is where I am.

The fact that I can pay my bills (mostly) on time and have a desk job doesn’t give anyone the right to silence my voice.

Especially when they do it anonymously.

What I'm Doing Tonight

Cooking. For spite.

Things are busy at work, OK at home. I've got WFC coming up this Friday. Juggling some writing projects.

Going to bed now.

Good Cancer-Lovin' Fun

A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teenagers could encourage sexual activity.

"Teenagers" is actually code for:

GIRLS. Women. Female. Just wanted to remind everybody that boys don't get cervical cancer. In this case, gender-neutral "teenager" might throw you off.

Oddly, nobody's talkin' bout withholding a cancer vaccine from all those young hoodlum boys on Prom night!

And people say women are all "paranoid" and shit about all that religion mixin' with women's health services.

Why oh why could that be?

(via Pandagon)

It's Not Misogyny if Women Say It!

Gee, I'm getting tired of that argument.

The Happy Clitoris

She (Dr. O'Connell) first became interested in the anatomy of the clitoris as a urology trainee when she realized preserving sexual function in women having pelvic surgery was pure guesswork. In contrast, the retention of sexual function in men undergoing prostate removal was paramount.

"There was no description of the clitoris in the main textbook that was being used to prepare surgeons in training. There was no diagram, and in the diagram of the pelvis no clitoris was evident," O'Connell says.

The clitoris needs more lovin'.

(via Mistress K)

So Much For the Boy's Club

What was that I was saying about marketing to men and women, again?

Majority of UK SciFi Channel viewers are women

The UK Sci-Fi channel reports that more than half its viewership is now female:

The digital television channel Sci Fi UK has seen a 10 per cent rise in the number of female viewers over the past eight years and 1.4 million women now tune in - 51 per cent of the audience. The channel, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, links the rise in "girl geeks" to the proliferation of heroines such as Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena.

(via boingboing)

And.. Why Feminism Doesn't Suck

Lest we all forget...

"I am writing these words in a bar in London in the spring of 1997," she says. "I'm drinking a glass of beer ... My ability to find work allows me to pay for my drink, a small freedom, but it also gives me all the other freedoms and dignities that women before the middle of century rarely knew: to choose whom I should live with and where I can go in the evenings and how I can spend my time ... I don't think about these freedoms ... Yet all these everyday transformations, as well as others - that I use contraceptives, that I work at a newspaper, that I got a degree at university, that I am paid much the same as my male colleagues, that I can vote, that I own a flat - were only brought to me after the struggle and argument of previous feminists."

And I am writing these words from a three bedroom flat in Chicago that I share with a lesbian couple who can walk down the street holding hands in Andersonville without getting shit thrown at them. I have a Master's Degree in history that I got at a university in South Africa of all places. I've literally traveled around the world. I'm engaged in a relationship with a younger man who lives in New York. We're not married, and we have a lot of guilt-free sinful sex because I was able to get an IUD: even though I'm single (some states still won't give you one unless you're married). I work for a telecommunications company that pays me enough to live on and where my boss actually brings and/or buys me coffee. I have my own health insurance. I didn't have to marry the first guy I dated/had sex with in part because I didn't have any massive family pressure to do so. I wear guys' clothes and nobody looks twice at me. I eat alone at restaurants and nobody asks me where or when my date's coming. I can afford to tip well. I travel a lot. I used to take boxing lessons. I regularly lift weights at the gym. I know how to throw a good right cross.

So when people tell me what a terrible, confusing world all those 70s feminists made for me, I can't help but look up and around at my life and realize that without all the gains our mothers made, I wouldn't be living the life I'm living now. Nor would my female friends. And woe to all of my guy buddies who like hanging out with the smart, beer-swilling independant person that is me. Think of all my friends of both sexes would miss out on if I weren't allowed the freedoms that feminism has given me.

That's a scary thought.

Feminism Sucks Because I Can't Get a Man

Oh, Maureen, Maureen. Maureen Dowd puts the smack-down on feminism again because she's a high-powered NY Times columnist who's over 40 and not married.

Yea, feminism sure has failed you, Maureen. I mean, look at all the quality men she missed out on dating:

At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties.

This isn't the first time that Maureen has lamented the fact that everywhere she looks in her NY City superset, men are marrying their maids, secretaries, and personal assistants.

At no point does she question whether or not she or any other women with "critical faculties" would want to date these men anyway.

In fact, this entire column feels like it's been written by a sixteen year old sitting at the front of the math class chewing her nails because "boys only notice the blond chicks."

I recognize the tone because I, too, once worried and gnawed over the fact that I was invisible to all the tall beautiful blond boys in grade school. Once I did start dating in high school I tried to dress and act more fem in order to keep said man, since he, Cosmo, and my girlfriends seemed to think this was the only way to "keep" a guy, and keeping a guy was akin to finding the holy grail.

Then I grew the fuck up.

Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise longue, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness.

Who are these women? Why can't they find honest, meaningful relationships? Maybe because they're play-acting, pretending to be somebody they're not, and turning off both men and other women. So not only are they not getting laid, they don't have any friends either.

Grow the fuck up.

Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry - in person and in cyberspace - with elaborate schemes designed to allow the deluded creatures to think they are the hunters.

And then they get angry when their prospective mates call them "deceitful." heh

"There are plenty of ways for me to find out if he's going to see me as an equal without disturbing the dating ritual," one young woman says. "Disturbing the dating ritual leads to chaos. Everybody knows that."

What planet are these women from? Just after my first date with B, I conspired to spend the night at his house. When he offered to sleep on the floor, I asked him how big his bed was.

Oh, that's not forward at all.

And oh, look, we're still together and I'm still getting laid.

A few years ago at a White House correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful and successful actress. Within minutes, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

To reiterate: Why would you want to marry these men anyway? These are the sorts of guys who'll tell you to quit your high-powered job, dress more fem, stop eating all together, and dump you on the street when you're forty and marry their secretary.

What the fuck do you want with people like this? I don't even have friends like this. Why would I fuck anyone who acted this way?

So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?

And here's the bit that really pisses me off everytime I read these backlash articles: why the hell are women so damned concerned about men all the time? Why are so-called feminist magazines and articles all about men?

As K pointed out when I read the NY producer line out loud, "Why's a guy need to be your mate?"

Why, indeed?

Not only are a good deal of women lesbians, but a shitload more are at least bisexual. If it's about kids, fucking adopt or get a sperm donor. And what's with having a mate? Be single. What's wrong with it? Single women suffer from less depression than married women, in general, anyway.

Pair up with another woman or a guy friend in a sexual or non-sexual pairing and buy a beach house. Learn to garden. Buy some big dogs. Why, as women, do we have to equate our success with "having" a man? Male bachelors with high-powered careers are rarely if ever berated for not "settling down." For them, having a high-powered career is enough. But as women, whether you're a doctor, lawyer, or CEO, your success is measured in whether or not you've managed to "keep" a man. Why? Why's having a relationship so important? I was single for nearly six years after high school, and you know what, I had a really awesome kick-ass time traveling around the world and getting a sweet education. Was I somehow a failure because I wasn't partnered up?

Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they dubbed it. "As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said.

And my response to this is - so what? Should you have not gone to Harvard Law so it'd be easier for you to get laid? If getting married was all you were looking for, shit, you could do that straight out of high school. You could have bundles of kids by now and be living in a rented picket-fence house, and when you're forty, without education or money of your own, said guy could dump you or die and you'd have... nothing. No job experience, no Harvard Law, and bundles of kids to feed.

That sounds fun.

When Gloria Steinem wrote that "all women are Bunnies," she did not mean it as a compliment; it was a feminist call to arms. Decades later, it's just an aesthetic fact, as more and more women embrace Botox and implants and stretch and protrude to extreme proportions to satisfy male desires. Now that technology is biology, all women can look like inflatable dolls. It's clear that American narcissism has trumped American feminism.

It's been argued that American culture is, at root, an adolescent one. And I'd agree. As a teenager, I was really obsessed with all of my supposed "imperfections." I believed that because of them, no men would ever like me, and as Maureen has pointed out, there's some bizarre belief that, as a woman, not being desired by men is the worst thing in the whole world.

But, again: then I grew up.

And you know what? Who the fuck cares what guys think? Why is feminism always talking about what guys want? Why should I care? Cause guys are in power? Then maybe I should become *more* powerful. And maybe the guys who like plastic women aren't the ones I should be interested in anyway. Maybe I should look for some alternatives. There are a lot of other choices out there, and lesbians in the audience may laugh aloud at the idea that silly straight girls are spending so much goddamn time concerned about men.

Maybe you should go out and grow up first, Maureen. Maybe you should go climb Kilamanjaro and help AIDS orphans in South Africa, then come on back home to New York City and tell me just how goddamn life-shattering it is that you aren't getting laid by an NY producer who thinks smart women are gross.

Put some of this shit in perspective, you fucktard.

What I Did This Week

Me: We're short on tower crews because they can make twice as much money in NOLA repairing the entire cell tower system out there. We're wheeling and dealing with who've we've got, "Sweetening the deal" whenever we can.

B: So, basically, you're telling me that tower crews are like mercenaries.

Me: Yea, pretty much.

B: So you're "in the field" hiring mercenaries.

Me: Yep. That's about right. And "flatlining the bar."

And I'll just let you guys figure out that last bit.

What's Wrong With This Form Rejection?

`Tis the season.

Just got back a form reject from Baen's Astounding Stories.

Let's play: What's wrong with this form rejection? See if you can spot it!

Baen's Astounding Stories wishes to woo back the casual reader and
become part of his entertainment habits. In that spirit, we are looking for thumping good stories, with plot, theme, character and resolution. We do not demand that your ending be so shocking that no one can see it coming and -- in fact -- no one can see where it came from. We don't demand that your idea be startlingly original, only that your execution of it be so.

We are not aiming to make you a literary star -- whatever that might be. We're trying to entertain readers. We are competing for a reader's beer money. We want stories that make the reader put the beer down and read to the end in breathless hurry. And we want him to feel satisfied with the logic of the ending when he gets there. If in addition the stories make him think, so much the better.

We want boys and their beer money! If your story's made for women who swill beer, too bad!

Strangely enough, instead of getting a simple "we don't want your story" I received a treatise on why the editors believe that so much fantasy/Science fiction sucks these days:

Over the last few years, perhaps because so many of our readers are also writers, science fiction and fantasy authors working in short form fiction have devoted themselves to outdoing each other in form and artifice, in the originality of the plots and the sheer shock of the stories' endings -- which often had nothing to do with what had come before. In the process often -- though not always -- the simple enjoyment of the story was lost and with it the casual reader's attention.

Let's face it, over the last few years stories have been more of a vehicle for awards than for readership and award committees move in different ways from those of a fan looking for a thumping good story.

Basically, if you're a "literary" writer looking to win "awards" it means you're bad at telling stories; your story, by virtue of its "literaryness" must have no plot and suffers from a lack of "simple enjoyment." Literary writers need not apply.

heh. heh. You want hack stories?

Oh, honey, I have hack stories!

Baen: lowering the bar.

Someday, I'm going to get into trouble for doing this sort of thing in public.

Workado

Yea, it's gonna be a busy week.

Luckily, also lots of free dinner, free lunch, free breakfast, free drinks. We've got lunch dates and dinner and drink dates with the reps for the company we're teaming with for this project.

And, as per the usual, the hotel we're staying at is awesome. It's the size of a one bedroom New York apartment. Separate room for the bed, with a closet, a tv, a desk, a living area with a couch and easy chair and another tv, a huge desk/eating table separating the kitchen from the living area, a big bathroom.

Yea. At least it's comfortable.

Though I must say, I'm really looking forward to those drinks.

I'm Feeling DownToday: Time for a Random Useless Quiz

KNIGHT

You are the Knight, the
legendary, romantic hero of great kingdoms. The
Knight is a true warrior and an epic hero. He
will do anything to defend his honor and his
kingdom. Whatever his lord or king commands he
will do without hesitation. He is very
virtuous; he holds honesty, loyalty, and
bravery in very high regard.

Color:
Purple
Animal: Lion
Gem: Ruby
Symbol:
Shield

Image:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/7339749/


Who would you be if you were a character in an epic fantasy? (beautiful pictures)
brought to you by Quizilla

What's with all this "he" crap?

(via tempest)

Total Book Count For The House:

2,749

Dude, we're so hitting the over 3,000 count by next year.

My sad, paltry piece of this count?

A mere 544 of these actually belong to me.

What kind of writer am I?????

Ah, yes: a poor one.

Need to work on that.

Off to Indy

Well, work is crazy mad wild and they're sending me to Indianpolis next week from Monday-Thursday. We're bascially living out of a hotel room there. I whined and complained about Indiana as much as possible, but it only served to delay the trip. We've got some insane amout of work to get done in the next twelve days.

Bah. But I was so happy spending all day writing and playing computer games!

So it goes. There's gotta be at least a couple times a year where I actually get paid to do my actual job. I guess. So I'm told.

Ha Ha

Ha ha. I see a new market has arrived for my Body History story.

This makes me happy. Goal is to have five stories total in the mail as of Monday.

Just Think of How Much Better the Ratings Would Be!

::cough:: ::cough::

(via Nick)

What a Slow Day

Slooooooooooooooooooowwww

Note

Do not use nasty wine even as cooking wine.

It is still gross after it is cooked.

Ug

Yea. Getting back to the gym after a break: now everything hurts.

In a good way, but damn, it hurts to raise my arms.

I Tucked in My Shirt Today

And the world did not recoil in horror.

Being Rachael Ray

I admit it, I have a huge crush on Rachael Ray, and I'm sometimes found secretly sighing over her on The Food Network.

As I'm a totaly sucker for the small-time-girl-makes-it-big story (for obvious reasons), I was delighted to find this:

Most of the thousands of recipes Ms. Ray has "canoodled" over the years were written in her cabin. She rented it 13 years ago and has lived there off and on with her mother and, sometimes, her younger brother, since. Some months she could barely put together enough money to cover the $550 rent.

"It was check-to-check living," Ms. Ray said.

She had grown up around Lake George, but the cycle of small-town life and low-paying jobs was wearing thin. In 1995, Ms. Ray headed to New York City. She worked first at the Macy's Marketplace candy counter and moved up the ranks quickly, learning about everything from buying cheese to how to shop for Liza Minnelli's holiday food gifts. When Macy's tried to promote her to a buyer in accessories, she moved to Agata & Valentina, the specialty foods store.

She stayed in the city for only two years. After a bad break-up, a broken ankle and a violent mugging in front of her Queens apartment that left her scraped and shaken, she headed home.

Ms. Ray moved back into the cabin and eventually landed a job at the fanciest food and equipment store in Albany. She was a buyer and a cook, preparing hundreds of pounds of food every day. As a holiday promotion, she developed a class to help people get dinner on the table in half an hour.

It caught on, so Ms. Ray started teaching the concept at a chain of local grocery stores and on a Schenectady television station. Anywhere they would let her, really. By 1998, she figured she could sell a companion cookbook, so she talked an independent Manhattan publisher into turning her pile of photocopied recipes into a book.

Then her moment arrived.

In 2001 a Food Network executive heard Ms. Ray cook on an upstate public radio show. The same week, a "Today" show producer saw her book and called.

Ms. Ray and her mom drove nine hours south in a snowstorm, and she nailed the "Today" show appearance. The next day, she said, the Food Network signed her to a $360,000 contract to teach America what she had been teaching the folks upstate.

My favorite part:

A favorite slam is that her meals take more than 30 minutes, which, especially for people with little kitchen acumen, they often do. They say she is untrained and relies on too many shortcuts, like shredded cheese and frozen French fries.

To which Ms. Ray says, they're right.

"I have no formal anything," she said. "I'm completely unqualified for any job I've ever had."

ha ha. Translation: Fuck you.

Tuesday Poetry

All Those Inuit Names for Snow
by Tom Tempkin

My mother is watching her mother die.
Gravity has declared war against the lower lip.
Salt has worn to fine gauze the threads

sprouting from the inner ear. For each one
that goes, we must learn a new word
for what we think life is, what we dream

it will be. Among our tricks and screams
and flowered boudoirs, we must all wear once
the wedding gown stained with mother's blood

or dance the implicit waltz while meandering
to victory with a swollen hand.
I will feed the cat when you're gone.

This is my promise.
The first one to wake whispers to the other:
poinsetta, aspen, sweet fig, dream of orchid, rose.

Why Arming Women Won't Stop Violence Against Women

So here's our heroine's choices. She can shoot him and get convicted of a variety of crimes, because you can't just go around shooting guys. The only guys you can shoot are burglars and guys who Don't Look Like Us. So she goes to jail. Then what do the rest of us do? She becomes like Andrea Yates or Susan Smith---the real life version of all those Evil Disney Mothers, while real life male scumbags get tossed into the collective dustbin of consciousness. We can't think ill of those that rule us. We can't look too closely at how they do it.

So tell me how giving women guns without changing the culture will do any damned good at all. It won't protect women, and chances are it will enrage the men who laugh at the idea that a woman has a right to enjoy her body while he does not. I have to say, too, a stray thought occurred to me. Guys who think they have such rights to women's bodies---what do you suppose their attitude is toward other methods of controlling those women's bodies? Do you really think you have to right to do anything with your body if they don't get off on it? Do you think they care about your body except if it gets them off? Do you really think they give a shit at all?

Giving women guns is just going to put more women behind bars. The very men who proclaim that this will solve the problem are removing themselves and their buddies from the responsible party list by suggesting it. "Hey," they whine, "We gave you an option, you chose not to take it. Not our problem any longer."

Writing Today

Got a couple stories back in the mail this weekend. Now I need to work on some new material.

Ah, I love the fall. I'm making a tasty vegetarian pasta tonight.

World Fantasy Schedule, Revised

I've finally nailed down the last bit of info I needed in order to book for the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, WI.

Jenn's got her proposal dissertation defense that Friday, so instead of bumming a ride up with her, I'm taking the train up late Thursday. I'll be getting in around midnight, but should be good to go for Friday/Saturday/Sunday.

I cancelled my reservations at the Doubletree because for the same amount I could get a lakeview suite at the Hilton Madison Monona Terrace, where Jenn and I stayed for our first Wiscon. We love it there, so I booked and prepaid for a slightly better rate.

Hope to see some of you there!

Once More Around the Mulberry Bush

Back to my morning weights, back to the gym tonight, back to drinking coffee.

Ahhhhhh

Here at work, Blaine's back from his honeymoon. Apparently, "Glad to be back," which says something about what a workaholic he's become. Dude, give *me* your two weeks in Hawaii, dude...

My Eyes Are Small And Squinty

Oh, I need to sleep more.

Octopus Vs. Shark

Cool.

Surreal Moment of the Day

Explaining to the new counterperson at the very new Starbucks on our corporate campus what "breve" meant, after repeating my order four times with varying degrees of slowness, so she could map down all the Starbucks-speak.

It was surreal not because she didn't know, but because I did.

Sometimes I worry that the corporate card and the nice shoes will turn me into a yuppie. All I need now is to actually be making money and driving an SUV.

I'm such a liberal hippie.

Friday Beer Blogging

Woman! Someday is Today!!

Women! Someday is today

Is motherhood instinctive or learned behavior? Both religion and science tell us that it is instinctive, much to the distaste of the feminist ideologists, who have never been overburdened by a solid grasp on either. But one need only watch the way in which a young girl mothers her stuffed animals to see the maternal instinct at work.

Her stuffed animals???

Researcher 1: As you can see, this female engages in play activities with her stuffed animals. This is instictive maternal behavior.

Researcher 2: And yet, this male child here is also engaging in play activities with his stuffed animals.

Researcher 1: He is learning animal anatomy in order to prepare him for the hunt.

Researcher 2: But this girl's stuffed animals have been separated into two teams, and one is mounting a strategic air attack against the other. And this boy appears to be... feeding his animals and calling them "Floppy."

Researcher 1: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.... ::waves hands in front of colleague's face:::

Although the Equalitarian Society is now, by most statistical measures, structured so as to favor its female members, it nevertheless poses a cruel choice to those women cursed by its costly blessings

Wow, I'd love to see how our Western Equalitarian society "favors" it's female members. We get to go to prison, too! Where are these "statistical measures, I wonder? hmmmmm

And a woman foolish enough to wait more than two decades before attempting to have children has no one to blame but herself.

And the fact that the state doesn't provide child and healthcare. And the fact that it took her those two decades to go to school and have a career that would make it financially possible for her to raise a child responsibly. Oh, and she had to find an actual, you know, willing partner to help her out with all this, and let's remember that men aren't all that eager to have kids at 20 years old, either. For reasons outlined above: want to go to med school? There's a decade, right there.

Oh, I'm sorry. I mean: women, it's all YOUR FAULT!

As for the likelihood that the technological future will eventually solve such problems, it is worth noting that no society that possesses artificial wombs, robot sex dolls, multiplayer video games and 24-hour sports networks is one in which men are likely to show a tremendous amount of interest in relationships or the opposite sex.

But I thought this was all women's fault? I'm confused now.

Bring on the babies in jars, in any case.

Fortunately, as we have not yet reached Nerdvana, there are a number of steps that a woman whose priority remains marriage and children can take in order to happily achieve those goals:

Well, thank Jesus for that!

Don't engage in casual dating relationships after 18. They're fun, and they'll also prevent you from pursuing more fruitful relationships.

Become a nun.

Make those potential long-term relationships your top priority. If you put college or your job first, there's a reasonable chance that a job is all you'll have at 40 ... and 60.

You should remain poor and illiterate. Men like women this way.

Consider the president's new Supreme Court nominee. The unmarried and childless Creepy McCrypto is on the verge of becoming one of the two most powerful professional women in the country – does she really represent the ideal American woman?

Wow! Kudos for getting Miers in here. No wonder the right wingers all hate Miers. She's unmarried and childless! This all makes a LOT more sense. *These* are the credentials they're looking for and can't find. They don't care that she's never been a judge. They're freaking out cause she's not married!

Settle earlier rather than later.

If it breathes and has a dick, hop on.

Those who are not still single at 35 are now married to men generally considered to be of lower quality than the men they spurned before.

Who are now gas station attendants.

Remember, your choices narrow as you get older, while men's choices broaden.

After 35, no man will ever want to have sex with you. Ever. Not even your husband. He has statstical measures, I'm sure. Though, I mean, we don't get to see them.

Luckily, if you're a lesbian, you get to luck out of this fate. Oddly, he doesn't mention this. Perhaps he thinks lesbians are mythical creatures made up in liberal hippie fairy books.

Let everyone know that marriage and children is your ultimate goal. Too many women, fearing the wrath of the Sisterhood, secretly wish for them while publicly and piously professing feminist-approved cant to the contrary.

The Wrath of the Sisterhood? Who be these sisters of wrath? Yea, cause, like, everybody from my hometown who was like, "I want to get married and have kids. That's my ultimate goal," I totally beat them up and strangled them.

No. If that's what you want out of life, you go for it. If you want that and a shitload more, I intend to remind you of that.

Unlike their female counterparts, men who say they don't want to get married or have kids usually mean it.

Ummmm. Yea. Cause we EVIL WOMEN LIE ALL THE TIME about such things. I really, desperately want 16 children and three husbands. I want to become a Mormon and move to Utah and make my own clothes and give up coffee.

And if you believe that, I have a some Nigerian money scheme I'll let you in on for only $29.95 a month.

Shed your man-hating friends, as well as those who buy seriously into the Equalitarian dogma. Misery loves company and miserable women like nothing better than to make everyone within a five-mile radius miserable, too.

Oh, finally we get to the lesbians. Kick out those lesbian friends of yours, and those closet-lesbians who sleep with men but say women need equal rights and access to contraception and equal pay for equal work! Those lesbian-friendly douchebags should be dropped like jeans and replaced with skirts, dammit.

The lesbians and lesbian-friendlies are just out to make you miserable, to teach you that you can fulfill all of your greatest hopes and dreams and live the life you've imagined! And who the hell wants that when you can marry the gas attendant at the local 7-eleven and bust out a couple of babies at 16 and live in poverty married to a guy who doesn't love you and who you aren't all that into?

Because isn't that what every woman wants?

Be brutal when assessing the men who are interested in you.

Castrate them.

Oh, sorry, different rant.

The way he treats others is the way he will eventually treat you.

Well now, how can I argue with that?

If you want the odds of easily bearing healthy children to be in your favor, set a goal of marrying by 25. You can always go back to school, you can't go back in time.

Because having children with the wrong person who steals your money and your self-esteem and fighting over your kids is a lot better than finding your own self-esteem, figuring out who you are, and boldly engaging in an equal partnership with a strong, smart, person who shares your goals and values.

Babies are more important than you are.

Remember that love is a choice, an action and a commitment, it is not a feeling.

Wow. That's very medieval. On to arranged marriages, anyone?

You Throw Like A Girl

TORRANCE, Calif. -- When the Bishop Montgomery High School quarterback went down with a fractured leg, his replacement stepped in and completed four of five passes for three touchdowns.

There's nothing too unusual about that, except that the replacement quarterback was a girl.

Miranda McOsker, 15, is one of 253 girls out of 100,000 high school students in California who are playing football this year, according to the California Interscholastic Foundation. She joined the private Catholic school's football program last spring.

"I didn't try out for quarterback, I was just looking to play anything," said the 5-foot-9, 140-pound sophomore. "One day I was throwing with the quarterback after practice and the coaches watched me. They told me to play quarterback the next day and ever since I've been playing quarterback."

WTF is "hard fantasy"?

Just when I thought I'd heard it all...

More on Food Obsession

My run with the flu pushed me off track with my gym and weights routine, and screwed my eating habits. Well, no, that's not true. My eating had been getting out of hand again as I was swallowed by stress, most of it having to do with trying to get the rewrites on the fantasy saga done. I felt like Iwas caught up in a tornado and then dropped into a big pool of sludge and I was floundering around, sinking faster and faster with every pitiful stroke...

It's no wonder I was literally bedridden and starving for a week, dreaming of food and the day when I could once again read a book without feeling like I was puzzling out a physics equation written in ancient Egyptian.

My week post-flu was spent being hungry all the time, eating lots of bread, pasta, yogurt, and soup and worrying about how much I was eating.

Last weekend, B came into town and said, "You know, I hate to say this, but you really have lost weight. It's a little disturbing."

Well, yes, it is. Because secretly, I really don't mind the way I look. For all my wishing and hoping that I'd drop two fucking sizes, I really don't mind looking the way I do. I like being substantial. But... but...

Now that the book's gone out, the major stress is off. I'm still living too much with my credit card, but I'm hoping to take care of that by the end of the year. My eating this week has been reasonable and very filling. I feel terribly content. I've been eating a big breakfast, snacking on grapes and yogurt during the day, partaking of communal roommate dinners at night (usually consisting of pasta and salad or fish and salad and asparagus, or eggs and vegetables, and etc.).

I've had no binging stress at all.

And I worried about that.

I worried about my weight, worried that I hadn't been able to get back to the gym, worried about what pancakes for breakfast every morning would do to my waistline. Worry, worry. Not a big worry, just that little, nagging voice, "You're eating too much. You're enjoying yourself. You won't lose weight this way. You're going to be confined to buying clothes from the same 3 stores for the rest of your life."

Boo-hoo

But nonetheless, there I was, sneaking out of the house last night and going to Borders to look for a list of books about compulsive eating, overeating, and body image.

I spent an hour going from shelf to shelf to shelf. With no luck. I couldn't find any of them.

And as I perused the "Recovery" section of the bookstore, looking at books purporting to cure me of smoking, bulimia, alcoholism, anorexia, and drug addiction, I thought, "What the fuck am I doing here?"

I was struck again at how much time, energy, and effort I put into thinking about dieting, weight loss, body image. It's not on my mind all the time now, but when I get to being worried, when I'm uncertain of myself, this is where I go back to. I think, "If I could just fix this one thing, everything will be all right."

Which is horseshit. Utter, utter horseshit.

I'll still be me. I'm the same person at a size 12 as a size 16. There's no difference.

And the real kicker? The real fucking kicker is that there's nothing wrong with me. I'm totally healthy. I take the stairs everywhere. I walk over an hour every day. I eat reasonably. I have no health problems whatsoever except that I overstress about things. That's going to be the source of any of my ill health problems, not the fact that I weight 200 lbs (or whatever). No doctor has ever told me to lose weight. I don't have any strange aches and pains in my back or my knees. I don't have diabetes. I don't smoke.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with me, and here I'm standing in the "recovery" section like I'm slowly choking to death on whipped cream.

Hardly.

So I left the Recovery section and went to the "General Military History" section and picked up a ridiculous number of books for God's War.

Fuck this shit.

I have more important things to do with my time.

Yea, I'll get back to the gym and hopefully jogging next week, but I don't intend to lose one bloody pound doing it.

I'm so tired of hating myself over a number.

Writing Schedule

Oddly enough, I've still got God's War slated to be finished by year's end. Not sure how I'll pull that off, but I've got a strong beginning, a strong outline, and strong research. I've taken some downtime for research recently, but this weekened should get me back into the groove.

I'd also really like to get back on the short story route. I'd like to finish:

The Boxing Magicians of Faleen

A story about a boy who wants to be a boxing magician, set in the same world as God's War.

Heroes

A dark little peice about madness, torture, flying women, and cannibalism. Yay!

I'd also like to send something to a couple of anthologies including Clash of Steel, and From the Trenches (war stories, baby!).

I had a depressing look over at Ralan at the current OK-paying SF/F zines out there, as I've been doing so much work on novels, I've ignored short markets. For good reason, it seems: they're mostly closed to submissions.

Yay.

This is Why You Really Need to Prepare For Your Interview With (INSERT FAMOUS AUTHOR HERE)

Seriously. Some people just suck at interviewing. Margaret Atwood takes her young interviewer to task.

(thanks, Jenn)

Free Books

Just a reminder, there are over 16,000 free books over at Project Gutenburg.

It's pretty cool.

Send Twisty Some Presents

Twisty, now uniboobal, is in recovery.

If you'd like to send her some stuff to peruse, go for it:

What I really need are mystery novels, or old movies, or even some good old patriarchy-affirming yet diverting SF. Email me.

You're a Super-Fatty: I Make Fun of You Because I Care

In the eighth grade, I had a science teacher who decided he was going to teach us about health and nutrition and exercise. I really liked the guy, all told, but he really, really didn't like fat people. Well, no, I'll amend that: he didn't understand fat kids.

Let's call him Mr. H.

This made dealing with him kinda tough, because I'd just put on 30lbs of puberty weight, and I wasn't skinny to begin with. I would later lose 20lbs and grow a few inches, but looking back at some of my 8th grade photos, I was startled to see it was my second highest height/weight ratio.

Was I horribly unhealthy? Well, I sure could have used some exercise, and I probably ate too many sweets. But my diet was just as shitty when I was thinner as I hit highschool as it was in the 8th grade - I just didn't eat *as much* shit food. But I sure did *look* "healthier," I'm sure.

In any case, Mr. H. decided it was time to do something about all the fat, unhealthy kids in the class. We did a 2 or 3 month "course" in the class on health and nutrition. So in addition to PE classes, we came to science class and did circuit training and kept food journals. People got to marvel at how much or how little other people ate. I discovered I could do just as many exercises as some of the skinny girls who ate less. And of course, I got my ass kicked by everybody who exercised regularly.

Mr. H. arrived on campus at 6:30 am every morning and went jogging. It's just what he did. He invited other students to join him in these morning jogs. Which was a great thing if you were already in shape and could keep up. People like me would have to work into doing something like that. And, of course, I have. I can jog three miles now. Not a fast three miles, mind you, but I can jog it nonetheless. I can more-or-less find clothes that fit me, though I've got a narrower range of stores to go to than my size 4 roommate, who can shop anywhere.

What I appreciated about Mr. H. is that he did seem to care. What he didn't seem to get, though, is where all the fat kids were coming from. I don't think he got that we didn't feel we could go jogging with him at 6:30 am without feeling like fat lazy slobs because we couldn't keep up. Being harrassed or feeling like a slothful moron at 6:30 am isn't anything anybody wants to experience.

Keeping food journals and then sharing them with your teacher (binge sessions included) and having other kids comment on them isn't fun either. Nor is being compared to an athlete in how many circuit exercises you can do.

Being an overweight kid who's been made fun of everytime you try to do something active (which gets worse, particularly for women, at puberty when you've got all sorts of things jiggling all of the sudden) is pretty off-putting. I'd rather go home and read books.

So it was with in mind that I read this article by a Canadian high school chemistry teacher commenting on the health risks to her "Super Fatty" students:

Another problem is that its a taboo to make fun of fat people. We make fun and harass smokers regularly, but we think its rude to make fun of fat/obese people.

And yet how else will fat/obese people gain the willpower to exercise/eat properly if they don't get negative feedback/concern about their weight.

I MAKE FUN OF YOUR FLABBY BODY BECAUSE I CARE! THAT'S RIGHT JABBA THE HUTT! GET OFF YOUR FAT ASS AND EXERCISE! PUT AWAY THE COCA-COLA AND THE GREASY FOOD! GO WALK IT OFF!

For the record, I can't think of anyone in high school who made fun of smokers.

I can think of a whole hell of a fuck of a lot who made fun of me and others for being chunky, tubby, fat, slothful, ugly, lazy, overweight, obese, bovine-like.

Hear that? Nobody makes fun of fat people enough. That's why high school students don't exercise. That's why they're not keen on understanding nutrition. They's why we never went out running when our uber-friendly science teachers at 6:30 am.

If we just make fun of fat people more often, they'll be thin. It won't depress us and send us into our rooms to binge on cake and ice cream for three days and watch Titanic and cry. And absolutely nothing of our weight has anything to do with genetics, as researched, scientifically and everything, below.

No, we'll be invigorated if we're made fun of! Just like in the Marines! We'll want to go out and get thin!

You want to know what invigorates me to exercise? I want to be strong so I can kick the shit out of assholes like this fucktard.

(via bfb)

Those Pesky "Fat Storage" Genes! Just Think How Well the White Folks Would Have Populated the West Without Them

DURHAM, N.C., Oct. 12 - A gene that programs muscle tissue to store fat is over-expressed in obese women, researchers here say, and may be a key reason why dieting fails...

For now the take-home message for clinicians treating obese people is that diet alone is unlikely to have much effect, Dr. Muoio said.

Well, first of all:

1) Duh.

2) Why is it always *women* only who get put into these studies? Because fat women are scarier than fat men? Why can't you look at both in the same study? Or do dual studies of men and women?

3) Does it worry anyone else that if we start trying to mess with something like a "fat storage" gene, the more at risk we are of living in a society that looks a lot like Stephen King's novel Thinner?

Boy-Gamer Porn Poetry

Though I must say, I'd like to see the girl-gamer version of this. Any takers?

Nerd Porn Auteur

But I don't wanna watch this misogynist he-man woman-hater porn.
I want porno movies that are made with guys like me in mind:
Guys who know that the sexiest thing in the world
is a woman who is smarter than you are...

My porn starlets will come in all shapes and sizes.
My porn starlets will be too busy working on their PhD to go to the gym.

In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.

Woe to the Unbelievers

Biology, in the western world, acts almost like the Qur'an in the eastern world - it is the ultimate excuse for why things for women cannot and will not change. In a secular world you are told that inequality rests on nature; and in a religious world you are told that it rests on God's word.

Haunted Alaska

Alaskan ghost stories...

Here's a couple from places I've been:

Circle - Circle Hot Springs - haunted by a former owner, they don't like renovations. Beers often move across the bar on its own. foot steps heard walking across the porch of the rental cabins

Fairbanks - mile 8-12 Chena Hot Springs Road - This road is haunted by ghostly lights. Late at night two lights that resemble headlights follows passing cars. Sometimes it will start to fly and form one bright light and other times it will just look like a fast moving car or truck with bright blue, white and orange colored lights.

(thanks, b)

Better Late Than Never

I'm catching up on my e-mail just now. Here's a worthwhile request for ya'll from Colleen Mondor:

As you may have read in the Bookslut blog two weeks ago, (I am a regular contributor over there), or over at Moorishgirl, I am working with a group in Baton Rouge who are helping children sheltered with their families at Southern University. We have put together a couple of wish lists of books and games that the folks at Parkview Baptist Church will happily deliver to the SU kids and other area shelter kids, all of whom would love to have a diversion right now. We are also trying to contact authors, illustrators, publishers, book and comic book reviewers in particular to let them know that any children, young adult or all ages titles they have lying around would certainly be welcome down in Baton Rouge.

If you could mention my project on your site, it would help get the word out. Also, feel free to buy off the lists, and send the links on to everyone you know and pass on my email to anyone who has any questions.

Take care and thank you for your help in spreading the word.

Best,

Colleen Mondor

Mailing Address for Donations:

Josh Causey
Parkview Baptist Church
11795 Jefferson Highway
Baton Rouge, LA 70816

Good Morning, Chiklits

Another day, another dollar.

B's in town for the long weekend, so we have been quite busy. Eating good food, watching shows. Stayed downtown Friday and Saturday night. Really neat to be bunking down a couple blocks from the Sears Tower.

Lots going on. More later.

I'm Sorry, I Had to Do It

They just make it so goddamn easy:

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The court that made Massachusetts the first state to outlaw slavery will now decide whether slaves from other states can be freed there.

The case is being closely watched across the country. If the Supreme Judicial Court strikes down a 1913 law, slaves from across the country could be freed in Massachusetts and demand human rights at home.

Eight slaves from surrounding states, all of whom were denied freedom papers in Massachusetts, are challenging the law. It forbids nonresidents from being freed in the state if their freedom would not be recognized in their home state.

Massachusetts last year became the first state to outlaw slavery. Forty-one others have passed laws or constitutional amendments reinforcing slavery.

Michele Granda, a civil rights lawyer for the slaves, argued Thursday that the 1913 law "sat on the shelf" unused for decades until it was "dusted off" by the governor.

Granda said the high court, in its historic ruling recognizing the freedom of slaves, found that under the Massachusetts Constitution, black slaves had the same human rights as white people.

"Nothing in (that ruling) says that our officials can discriminate simply because officials in other states discriminate," Granda told the six-judge panel.

Attorneys for the state argued that the law is being enforced in an evenhanded way.

Assistant Attorney General Peter Sacks said Massachusetts risks a "backlash" if it flouts the laws of others states by freeing slaves from states that allow slavery.

"We've got respect for other states' laws," he said.

The high court is expected to rule in the next few months.

The eight slaves who sued are from Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and New York.

They include Sandi and Bobbi Cote-Whitacre of Essex Junction, Vermont, who are considered slaves in their home state but would like to be legally free.

What's the Lyndon Johnson quote? "Sometimes you do something because it's right, not because it's popular."

She Makes a Wonderful Sweet Potato Pie

Hitting the Media's Glass Ceiling

Harriet Miers may have broken through glass ceilings on her way to a Supreme Court nomination, but President Bush’s “work wife” has a long way to go with gender stereotyping in mainstream media coverage. Need proof? Compare news coverage in the days after her nomination with coverage this summer of the John Roberts nomination:

ROBERTS : “A career that had been marked by distinguished and relentless advancement.” (LA Times, 7/25/05)

MIERS: “She’s not somebody who is a gossip.” (AP, 10/4/05)

ROBERTS: “Brilliant but self-deprecating, earnest but not humorless.” (Boston Globe, 7/21/04)

MIERS: “She never misses a birthday.” (LA Times, 10/4/05)

ROBERTS: “Exceptional intellect. Exceptional temperament. A conservative judicial philosophy.” (LA Times, 7/25/05)

MIERS: “She makes a wonderful sweet potato pie. Many marshmallows.” (AP, 10/3/05)

ROBERTS: “Disciplined, self-assured and performance driven.” (Chicago Tribune, 7/24/05)

MIERS: “She would look at you blankly if you mentioned the name of a designer.” (Bloomberg, 10/4/05)

MIERS: “A pit bull in size 6 shoes.” (New York Times, 10/3/05)

ROBERTS: Sorry. No word on what size shoe John Roberts wears.

I just love our media.

What I've Been Up To

I've been spending a good deal of time recovering from sickness and catching up on all the things that didn't get done while I was sick. There were a lot of things.

I had several writing-related commitments to finish in addition to regular things like house chores, bills, and laundry. Got my book out to the Agent, wrote a recommendation for promotion letter for my academic advisor in SA, edited a paper for my brother, and have started in on my first contracted writing assignment for a software company.

On top of that, the Day Job has been busier than usual (meaning I'm actually doing things work-related during work hours), and everybody on our Indy team is wound a bit tight, especially Yellow, which makes working with him a little twitchier than usual. I've got a number of daily updates/reports to generate, which are annoying more than difficult. Been working on cutting myself away from work when it's over. I've been letting stress get the better of me, which is likely one reason I got hit so bad with the flu. I need to wipe my hands of work when I leave the office. It's just not worth stressing over. I'm not going to be doing this stuff much longer.

B is in town this weekend (yay!!), and we're snagging a hotel for a couple of nights because Jenn has a couple of friends in for the weekend and, well, we've only got one bathroom, alas. Looking forward to eating junk food, watching boxing and movies, and going to the Field Museum with B. And sleeping. And sex.

You know, good stuff like that.

I'll be heading back to the gym next week. After a week and change out with sickness, I started back up on my morning free weights this week, so I figure progressing to gym work next week is a nice, steady way to get back into things. I really don't want to wear myself down and get sick again.

The real fun month will be November. I've got the World Fantasy Con in Madison from the 4-6, flying to NY to visit B the 18-20th, and visiting my buddy Stephanie and her husband Ian in Ohio from the 23-26 (I'm bringing the wine, baby!). I've got more traveling in December. Because of B's school schedule, I'll probably be doing NY again December 16-18th and then hitting my parents' place for the holidays from the 22-28th.

There are a few more things that need to start happening in these next couple of months, too. I need to get out my application for the MFA program at Brooklyn College, and I need to start putting away money for my move to NY next July. I've been doing preliminary work looking into prices/areas of Brooklyn/Queens/Manhattan and looking at what sorts of jobs are available, and that process will increase in intensity as the time for movement nears. We'll need to start looking in earnest for a place in April, and by May I need to be looking into jobs if the BC College thing doesn't pan out. And, of course, temp jobs if it does. And let us not forget that my book God's War has a January completion date.

Busy life, good life.

Who Will Be Eaten First?

The Elder Gods are going to rise and eat us all!!

Orgies are the way to ease social tensions, claims US judge

..it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

It seems unlikely that this is what President Bush meant when he promised to appoint more judges like Scalia to the court, should the opportunity arise.

The first major study of an experimental vaccine to prevent cervical cancer found it was 100 percent effective

No shit?

I'd like to see a study that wasn't done by the maker of the vaccine, but if this turns out to be true, it's hellacool:

The first major study of an experimental vaccine to prevent cervical cancer found it was 100 percent effective, in the short term, at blocking the disease and lesions likely to turn cancerous, drug maker Merck & Co. said.

Gardasil, a genetically engineered vaccine, blocks infection with two of the 100-plus types of human papilloma virus, HPV 16 and 18. The two sexually transmitted viruses together cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers.

I Want to Grow Up to Be Just Like You!

(thanks, K!)

How Time Flies

At the weekly office meeting today, I was startled to hear that Blaine, my old boss, had been at the company two years as of this week.

I was startled because I started working here a month after he did.

I'll have been here two years next month.

Where did the time go?

Work

Work has picked up (the old 3 months on/3 months off cycle), so things will continue to be slow for a bit.

Will be back later.

Good Morning, Chiklits

I seem to have weaned myself off coffee during my sickness.

This is very sad.

Comment Spam

Dealing with it. Hang in there.

Serenity

It's good. Go see it.

Hat & Coat Weather

I am clawing up from the dregs of sickness and discovering that there's a whole bright, beautiful world out there.

I'm also catching up on the three trillion things that I had to let slide while I was confined to bed, too weak to even read for long periods.

It was a bitch.

I've gnawed at the pile of stuff, and am feeling better about it. House chores, bills, e-mails, ticket reservations for Thanksgiving in Dayton, need to reserve my damn hotel room for World Fantasy, new contract writing job with a software company (paperwork, first little assignment), tackling the huge mindless waste of space that is my day job (full of dates and numbers and five daily reports and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit Xs 2), finishing the last of the Book rewrites so I can get that out by Friday/Saturday, and itching to get back to working on God's War.

I'm feeling awake, I have energy, I'll just be stirring around the rest of the week finishing up my backlog. I have lingering weakness and some trouble eating certain foods as yet, but I'm definately in recovery mode.

An Encounter with the HR Manager

I bumped into the HR manager in the hall, and she asked if I was any better.

I said, well, no.

JZ, one of the lead architects, is still out with the same thing (he still has PTO time. I burned all my up on writing days and trips to NY). After lamenting about the fact that I've been barely able to get down toast and soup for the last week, she said, cheerfully, "Well, you're getting really skinny!"

ARRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHGHGHHHRRHRHHRRHRHRHHRHRH

That's because I'm FUCKING STARVING!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOW IS THIS A GOOD THING????

And I know it's all muscle mass. You know the amount of retraining I'm going to have to do?

America.

You're sick and starving, but hey -- YOU'RE LOSING WEIGHT! Be joyful!

I just want some goddamn nachos.

Still Down for the Count

Tried to eat real food on Friday, and promptly gave it back over to the porcelain god. I've been living on a bowl or two of soup and two slices of toast a day, because that's about all I can keep down.

And I've been dreaming of food. DREAMING of food. Nachos, Taco Bell, hot dogs. It's a good sign that I have cravings, but I'm filled with a nausea that won't let me consume very much of soft bland foods, let along anything hardier. I'm still very weak, and I hate the nausea. It's like there's a fist in the middle of my chest, and beaneath that, this broiling slosh of burning stomach acid that refuses to let me eat anything it doesn't like.

Drinking lots of water, soda, apple juice. Apple juice is good. I just can't believe this is going on this long. I'm afraid that if I do buckle and plop down $150 for a doctor they'll say "Sleep a lot, and drink some apple juice." ARRGGG

We'll see. I tend to have more energy in the morning, less at the end of the day, when I tire myself out. I'm optimistically saying that I do feel a smidge better each day, but I can't really back that up.

I'm still down for the count, irritable, weak, tired, and have trouble concentrating. This is crappy for a number of reasons, because I have a lot of shit to do, but my body's telling me to STOP, and I have to stop and wait for it to recuperate before I can even start thinking again about doing something non-useless.